


So-called "soulmates"

by radioactivesaltghoul



Series: soulmates & coffee shops [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Crack Treated Seriously, Dirty Talk, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hate Sex, It just takes a while, Multi, Obligatory Reylo Angst and Drama, Sexting, also a little bit of a coffee shop au if you squint, ben and rey's therapists have their work cut out for them, blatant canon parallels, copious swearing, earn your happy ending!, have a rose/finn/poe/kaydel ot4 because why the fuck not, i actually had to make up a new relationship tag for that one, is it possible to combine hatesex with soulmate sex?, snoke is a repeat misogyny offender, they eventually figure out how to have good boundaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-06-15 09:30:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 57,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: Most people are excited to meet their soulmate, whose first words to each other are marked on their bodies when they turn sixteen. But most people don’t have insults marked on their skin. Ben Solo has always thought that the concept of soulmates were bullshit, and Rey Jakkusen has been doing everything in her power to avoid a situation where someone might utter the words to her.Too bad the universe has other ideas.





	1. So much for 'love in a coffee shop'

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, I actually hate the concept of soulmates for many reasons, but I love soulmate AUs because of the creative way that people represent the way that people know they’ve met their soulmate. So naturally, I had to crack-ify the concept and apply it to reylo.
> 
> Also, I know nothing about the property development industry, so forgive me for any errors there.

Ben Solo thought the whole “soulmates” thing was bullshit, but then again, the words that had appeared on his skin on his sixteenth birthday weren’t exactly the most flattering ones. His mother’s face had fallen and his father burst out in laughter as they read the newly-marked words above Ben’s left knee. Which was typical of his father; he was kind of a dick when he actually bothered to hang around.

“I’m dying to know what kind of life you end up leading where your soulmate’s first words to you are _those_ ,” Han had said in between guffaws. 

Leia hadn’t said anything, but Ben knew that she was thinking of all the ways his life could go horribly wrong to put him in a situation where those were the first words someone said to him. Which was also bullshit, seeing as she was always too busy with work to actually give a shit about what he got up to anyway.

“See? Soulmates are stupid. I don’t need one,” he said gruffly. He’d die before he admitted it, but he’d actually been a little excited about seeing what words would appear on his body at the exact moment he turned sixteen, despite how bullshit the whole thing was. He’d seen all of his classmates as their marks appeared, talking about all the ways in which they could put themselves into the path of their soulmate. And he’d heard the gossip about that one girl who had not one, but _two_ sets of soulmarks on her. Rumor had it that she was already talking about the polyamorous relationship she was going to end up in, preferably by the time she turned 25. (Not that having two sets of soulmarks automatically meant polyamory; sometimes it just meant that your first soulmate died before you met your second. But Cassandra Singh was _set_ on having at least three kids by two different men.)

Although, this was pretty much par for the course in Ben’s life. He’d never managed to fit in among his classmates, and the fact that he hadn’t grown into half of his body yet (seriously, why were his hands and feet so _big_ , like how tall could he possibly get with a mother as short as his?) didn’t help. So _of course_ he would end up with weird soulmarks in a spot that was impossible to cover up when he was wearing shorts, which meant that he couldn’t hide the strange words from his classmates during gym class. The rumors about his newly minted soulmarks were going to spread faster than Cassandra’s babydaddy plans.

Fucking hell. He was sixteen and already failing at life. Why couldn’t things ever go his way?

So he took his fate into his own hands, desperate to prove to everyone that no, he was _not_ going to fail at life, no matter how much his soulmarks indicated otherwise. He became a workaholic at the age of sixteen, desperate to be the best in class. And the workaholism didn’t stop, not when he graduated from high school, not when he graduated from undergrad, not when he graduated from law school (all at the top of his class, of course), and _definitely_ not when he took a job at the prestigious First Order Properties firm in their legal department as a final ‘fuck you’ to his parents and everyone who had ever assumed that he was destined to fail. Sure, his mental health was a fucking mess, and sure, his relationship history was pathetically short, but who cared? Ben had more important things to worry about than destructive panic attacks and shitty soulmates.

 

* * *

 

The only thing that the appearance of Rey’s soulmarks had done was prove exactly when her birth date and time were. She’d been dumped in foster care at a very young age when she was found wandering the streets of a shitty city in northern England, so they’d had to estimate her birth date when they registered her with social services. It was awkward having to legally change her birth date and time, but it wasn’t the first time someone’s actual birthday had been revealed by the unexpected appearance of soulmarks.

“Happy birthday, dear,” the clerk at city hall had said when Rey pushed the signed paperwork back across the desk. “What are the magical words you’re expecting?”

Rey pulled the neck of her shirt to reveal the words written just under her right clavicle. “Charming, I know,” she said when she saw the shock on the clerk’s face.

“Well, you never know,” the clerk said, clearly struggling to say something positive. “Maybe they’re meant as a joke. Or maybe you meet your soulmate in an improv comedy group!”

Rey rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t care about this soulmate stuff. I just want to be left alone to program computers in peace. My soulmate can fuck right off.”

But she couldn’t help fixating on the words. They were hard to avoid, after all; she was faced with the sight of her collarbone in her reflection every day. As far as insults went, it wasn’t the worst one in the world, but it wasn’t particularly pleasant to think about the fact that someone out there who she was _destined_ to be with would think to call her that someday. It probably just meant that her “soulmate” was going to abandon her, anyway. Everyone seemed to abandon Rey.

So she worked hard trying to avoid a situation in which someone could possibly say the words to her. She threw herself into her schoolwork and eventually was awarded a scholarship to study computer engineering in university, and then she threw herself into internships and job hunting and landed a job at a small company that was looking for an app developer. No, instead of worrying about her goddamn soulmarks, she was spending her time in a _real_ workplace that had offices and whiteboards and deadlines and rules. Hell, she’d even moved to the other side of the Atlantic in an attempt to distance herself from her past and her shitty childhood home.

As part of her “millennial working in tech in a big city” routine, she had a favorite coffee shop that she got coffee from on her way to work each morning. Kanata Brews. Their cold brew was to _die_ for, in Rey’s opinion. And once she introduced her coworker Rose to Kanata Brews’s chai latte, it became routine for them to meet there in the morning before they headed into the office. 

“You know I love the drinks here,” Rose said one day. “But have you ever thought about branching out and trying something new? There are so many coffee shops that are closer to the office than this one.”

“Maybe,” Rey said as she stirred her coffee with a straw. “But there’s something about this place that keeps me hooked on their coffee.”

Rose gave her a side eye look. “This has nothing to do with Mr Tall, Dark, and Desperate For Caffeine who comes in here every day around the same time as us, does it?”

“What?” Rey said, her face heating up. “Why would you—no. No! That is _definitely_ not what is happening here.”

Rose smirked. “Sure it isn’t,” she said. “Come on. Poe’ll freak if we’re late for the team meeting today.”

Rey spent the rest of the walk to the office protesting the fact that she had a stupid crush on some guy who just happened to go to the same coffee shop that she did around the same time every day. And, like, it was _such_ a stupid crush. She’d never even _talked_ to the guy. But she was almost always with Rose, and she was terrible at making the first move because she was so afraid of meeting the person who would say the insult marked on her skin to her. She’d rather end up alone than with someone who started off a relationship by insulting her. And anyway, it was very likely that he had his own soulmate who wasn’t her, which meant that he wouldn’t be interested in dating her.

(Not everyone met their soulmate, but a lot of people liked to “save” themselves for their soulmate. Rey tended to date people without soulmarks—or people with multiple sets of soulmarks, because they were less attracted to the idea of monogamy anyway—so that she could avoid all of that drama. She’d never met another person who was trying to avoid their soulmate, though.) 

Also, it was safer to admire “Mr Tall, Dark, and Desperate For Caffeine” (because Rose was right, he _did_ seem desperate for caffeine most mornings, so even though he was the hottest person she’d ever laid eyes on, he was kind of a dick until he got his hands on a giant cup of coffee) from a distance than to take the step of trying to actually talk to him.

Plus there was that whole “abandonment issues” thing that she was working on with a therapist. 

“She doth protest too much,” Rose finally said as they entered their office building and made their way up to the seventh floor. “Look, I’m not judging you for your crush. I’m just trying to tease you. I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.” And that was the thing about Rose. She was just so sweet. Rey would have been lying if she’d said that she didn’t have a little crush on her. But unfortunately for Rey, Rose was not her soulmate. Rose’s first words to her had been _Oh, you must be Rey! I’ve heard so many good things about you._ (She and Rose had never discussed soulmarks. It _was_ a pretty personal topic, after all. And anyway, Rey didn’t want to bring it up if she could avoid it, and she always wore high-necked shirts that covered her shoulders. If Rose didn’t want to discuss it either, then perfect. Rey wouldn’t have to reveal the embarrassing words etched on her skin.) 

Rey was saved from having to respond to Rose’s comment by the sight of Poe all but shooing them into the daily team meeting. _Good,_ she thought. _No more talk of coffee shop crushes that are never going to go anywhere._

_Even if I do secretly want to fuck his brains out._

 

* * *

 

Ben knew that he would probably save a lot of time and money if he just started making his own damn coffee at home every morning, but it was just so much easier to stop at Kanata Brews on his way into work every day. Sure, their service sometimes kind of sucked, but their coffee was always made fresh, just the way he liked it. And there was that cute girl who stopped there every morning. (One of these days he’d work up the courage to ask her out. Which was a total lie, but whatever, like he never lied to himself about anything else.) Sometimes they made eye contact, which made him feel simultaneously giddy and extremely anxious. He may have thought that the whole soulmates thing was bullshit, but she probably didn’t. And anyway, he didn’t know which was worse, the idea of her letting off a string of insults or the idea of her not being the one to say the ‘magical’ words to him. Either way, it was a lose-lose situation. No, it was much easier to just sit back and lie to himself about the possibility of actually talking to her someday.

Besides, he was way too busy at work. First Order Properties was one of those firms that paid _very_ well, but required employees to work sixty-hour weeks, minimum. Especially in Ben’s case, because he was the Executive Head of Market Consulting and Legal Management and he answered directly to the CEO, Billy Snoke. It was a pretty good position, all things considered. He’d been totally lost until Snoke took him under his wing and helped him achieve his true potential. It allowed him to get out of debt (hey, law school was _expensive_ ) and he had a pretty sweet deal with his giant apartment in the heart of the city. Not that he had much time to enjoy it, but the fact that he could live like that was pretty great.

Ha, take _that_ , high school classmates.

So on one particularly difficult morning, when he’d been on the phone arguing with other attorneys until three in the morning, he snapped.

Well. This sort of thing happened a lot. Ben kind of had an anger problem. He’d never really developed healthy coping mechanisms when he was a kid, and it was only now with the help of a therapist at the age of 32 that he was starting to figure out how to manage it. But it had been getting steadily worse and worse over the past year, and his therapist had started dropping hints that _maybe_ the source of a lot of his anger problems these days was his job. But he owed so much to Billy Snoke. And he didn’t know how to get out from under his wing without destroying his career. Snoke had enough influence over the industry that he could get Ben blacklisted at any of his competitors. And anyway, most firms probably didn’t want to hire someone with a reputation for violent outbursts, even if he _was_ the best at finding legal loopholes in the entire industry. 

It was that damn Concrete Resistance company. They’d popped up on First Order Properties’s radar about three months ago. First it was just a little bit of talk here and there about the idea of bringing back community gardens and greenspace in cities. This was something that had been tried a couple of times in the past, but none of the groups ever made it off the ground, and their efforts had died out after a few months. 

Not Concrete Resistance, however. Somehow, their PR team was actually competent enough to get the word out about their service, and they were gaining traction. And, coincidentally, they happened to be based in the same city as First Order Properties. Which is what Ben had been arguing about on the phone last night. First Order Properties operated around the globe, but their headquarters was in the city as well. And Concrete Resistance was starting to grow enough that they were in trouble of infringing on a number of properties that Snoke had his eyes on. Who needed community gardens when you could just go down to Whole Foods and buy vegetables there? Sure, there were people who couldn’t afford to shop there. But that wasn’t First Order’s problem, was it?

So Ben was probably in the worst mood he could possibly be in when Snoke told him to go down and investigate (“infiltrate” had been his exact wording, but Ben thought that was a bit overdramatic) a demonstration Concrete Resistance was giving at an old park that Snoke had had his eyes on for a while. And on top of everything, it started raining as he neared the park. Ben figured that they would postpone the demo until after the rain cleared—after all, who the hell wanted to hang out in a park in the rain?—but to his surprise, they had a surprisingly large crowd gathered. _Shit._ This was not good news for First Order Properties. Ben’s workload was about to jump from 60-hour weeks to 80-hour weeks.

So with everything that had happened that morning, was it any wonder that he yelled “Go to hell, you stupid hippie bitch!” at the woman holding a large umbrella with the Concrete Resistance logo on it after she bumped into him?

 

* * *

 

Rey was not having a good day. She didn’t _do_ this PR shit. She was a computer programmer, for shit’s sake! And the stereotype about computer programmers being socially awkward nerds was very true in her case. But Kaydel was out sick with the flu, and it was really important to Poe that this demonstration go off without a hitch, so Rey had found herself heading out with the rest of the Concrete Resistance team to the park where they were holding the demonstration.

“It’ll be fine,” Poe said. “You don’t even have to speak in front of people. You can just hand out information sheets to anyone who’s interested. I’ll even let you have the umbrella.” 

She resisted the urge to grimace. This meant so much to Poe, and if Concrete Resistance could get more people involved, then that meant that they would attract the attention of investors. And if they got the attention of investors, then that meant the company would get more money, which meant that everyone got raises. Rey had always felt like she didn’t need to be rich, but it would be nice to make enough money to afford a nicer apartment.

Doing the job Rose had dubbed “PR Lite” was going well until someone in a fancy ‘I am corporate monkey’ suit decided to curse at her. Rey was so pissed off (seriously, it wasn’t _her_ fault that he was having a bad day) that she yelled “Go fuck yourself with a cactus, you corporate bag of dicks!” before her brain caught up to the exact words he’d said.

Her eyes widened, and the man froze. He turned slowly, clearly as disturbed by the encounter as she was. And then, to make the whole situation even _worse,_ because _of course_ an already bad situation was going to get worse, she realized exactly who the man was. _Mr Tall, Dark, and Desperate for Caffeine._

Oh, Rose was never going to get over this. 

Rey had always thought that the “time stood still when I met my soulmate” cliche was an exaggeration, but time really did stand still as she and the man stared at each other. The sounds of the other people around them faded away, and she even stopped noticing the rain picking up speed. It was as if they had carved out their own pocket of the universe that existed only for them.

_Motherfucking SHITBALLS._ She had gone out of her way to avoid this moment, and now that it was here, she had no idea what to do. What was the protocol when you met the soulmate you were trying to avoid, anyway? It wasn’t like this was a normal situation. He seemed to be having the same reaction, judging by his facial expression. Were they supposed to speak? Introduce themselves? Exchange numbers? Surely their relationship —if they chose to pursue one—wouldn’t be based on insults. Would it? That wasn’t how the whole system worked. It _couldn’t_ be. But then again, maybe he had been trying to avoid her as much as she had been trying to avoid him, judging by the fact that her first words to him were just as bad as his to her.

She opened her mouth to say something but before she could figure out what to say, a gust of wind tugged at the umbrella, nearly blowing it out of her hands and causing her to drop some of the Concrete Resistance info cards she was holding. By the time she caught a grip on the umbrella and the remaining cards, he had disappeared into the crowd. Not that she was really interested in pursuing a relationship with him, but...they couldn’t have even swapped names? If nothing else, so that they could avoid each other.

“Why do you have that weird look on your face?” Rose asked as she sidled up to Rey.

Rey stared in the direction of where the man had vanished. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “I just met my fucking soulmate.”

 

* * *

 

This day was going from bad to worse. It was actually shaping up to be a contender in the ‘worst day of Ben’s life’ contest. Because not only had he actually met his soulmate (which, it was fair that she called him a ‘corporate bag of dicks’ after he had called her a ‘stupid hippie bitch’), but she was Coffee Shop Girl _and_ she was involved in the group that was about to make Ben’s life a living hell.

Not that it wasn’t already a living hell. But it was about to get so much worse.

It was a blessing that a gust of wind had broken the spell on whatever weird moment they’d been having, because it allowed him to slip into the crowd and find the nearest fast food joint so that he could go have a panic attack in the bathroom. Which was a new low for him, having a panic attack in a fucking _Burger King bathroom_ after meeting his fucking _soulmate._

Fuck. No one could _ever_ know about this. Not his parents, not his coworkers, and certainly not his boss. As much as he wanted to forget that the whole interaction had ever happened, he couldn’t shake the image of the look she had given him when she’d realized what he’d said to her. He found he desperately wanted to know what had been going through her head in that moment. _Goddamnit._ Why did it have to be Coffee Shop Girl? He was never going to be able to go back to Kanata Brews again. Maybe it was time he finally bought his own goddamn coffee maker.

_Shitfuckassgoddamit_ why _. Thank fuck for Ativan,_ he thought as he popped a pill. He really needed to talk to his fucking therapist. _Rock?_ he thought. _Meet bottom._ He’d spent half his life trying to avoid this moment and in that time, he’d never actually let himself consider what he’d actually do if his soulmate ever showed up. And, like, he didn’t even have anyone to _talk_ about this with. Hux and Phasma were the closest things he had to friends, and they didn’t even like each other all that much. It was just that they spent so much time at work, which meant that they spent so much time drinking together after work, so the most they knew about each other were everyone’s preferred brands of whiskey. Soulmarks were such a personal topic that he’d never even discussed his with his therapist.

There was no way that he could go back out there and investigate Concrete Resistance. It was a total conflict of interest, and he never wanted to lay eyes on _her_ ever again. Fuck, it had been so much easier to just, like, pretend that she was dead or something before they’d swapped first words.

Until the Ativan kicked in, he was stuck replaying the scene in his head, his mind constantly following every single “what if” that it could conjure. It was too coincidental that his coffee shop crush turned out to be the soulmate he was trying to avoid, wasn’t it? What was that look that she had in her eyes in the exact moment she’d realized what he’d said to her? And did she _really_ call him a ‘corporate bag of dicks’? What did that even _mean_? And the million dollar question: 

Had she been avoiding him all this time, too?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miscellaneous headcanon I have about this universe: their equivalent of tinder has photos and a section for soulmarks and that’s it, nothing else, even though a) soulmarks can sometimes be really vague and b) the words written on someone’s skin usually don’t give any clues about the person who says them anyway. Worldbuilding soulmates AUs is actually really fun!
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: do words swapped over text count as first words, or do they have to be words spoken aloud? What do you guys think?


	2. So much for "avoiding drama"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As much as they want to avoid each other, the universe (and Ben’s boss) have other ideas for Ben and Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, your comments and kudos make me so happy and I'm so flattered that you liked what you read so far! I'm looking at a Monday update schedule for this, but if I ever fail to make that, feel free to bug me about it on [tumblr](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/). You guys also had a lot of really good ideas about "what counts as first words?" and I loved hearing them! (And if you're reading this much later on after the original post date and have ideas, please don't hold back.) I have my headcanons for this universe set for this fic, but I LOVE hearing what other people think.

"Say that to me one more time. _Who_ is your soulmate?”

Rey took a deep breath. “That guy from the coffee shop.”

“Are you sure? I mean, sometimes first words can be a little ambiguous, can’t they?” Rose asked. She had dragged Rey back to the office as soon as the crowd had started to lighten up, giving Poe some excuse that Rey hadn’t paid attention to. There were a couple of remaining Concrete Resistance employees who hadn’t gone to the demonstration, but the office was mostly empty as Rose pulled Rey into an empty conference room and shut the door behind her.

Without saying a word, Rey stripped off her jacket and unbuttoned her blouse enough to expose her right clavicle. “You were saying?” she said as she took in Rose’s expression.

“I’m so sorry,” Rose said, obviously trying not to laugh. “But those are the worst soulmarks I’ve ever heard of.”

Rey sighed. “It’s fine, you can laugh,” she said as she buttoned her shirt back up. “I’ve been going out of my way avoid ending up in a situation where I could possibly be called a ‘stupid hippie bitch,’ and it _still_ managed to happen.” She plopped down in a chair and laid her head down on the desk with a _thump._ “What do I even _do_ right now?”

“Camp out at Kanata Brews until he shows back up?” Rose said, sitting down next to Rey.

“You know this means we can never go back there, right?” Rey said.

“What are you talking about?” Rose said. “Your coffee shop crush is your soulmate. We _have_ to go back!”

“Why are you so concerned about my soulmate drama?” Rey asked grumpily. “Don’t you have your own to worry about?”

“No drama there,” Rose said with a happy smile.

“You found your soulmate?” Rey asked. “When?”

Rose shifted, suddenly awkward. “Well, the thing is, I have three sets of soulmarks.”

Rey blinked. “Three?” She’d heard of people having two sets, but three? How did Rose have three soulmates? Had she met all of them? A polyamorous relationship with three people wasn’t exactly frowned upon, but it still made people uncomfortable. But a polyamorous relationship with _four_ people? It was unheard of.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a little awkward to explain to people. And it’s even more awkward when I talk about who they belong to.”

“So you’ve met your soulmate? Or soulmates?” Who could Rose possibly be soul-bonded to that it would be awkward?

“We work at a really small company, and two of them work here,” she said. “The third works a shitty corporate job. We keep trying to convince him to leave, but it would create an HR nightmare if all four of us worked here.”

Wait. _Two_ of their coworkers? “Who —” Rey started to ask before she realized that it was a pretty personal question.

“Poe and Kaydel,” Rose said. “But you _can’t_ tell anyone. We don’t want to make a big deal out of it. And given the fact that Concrete Resistance too small to have an actual HR department…”

_Poe_ and _Kaydel_ were Rose’s soulmates? And there was a third? _How does that even work? Never mind, don’t ask that._  

Rose sighed. “See, this is why we aren’t open about it at work,” she said. “I’m sorry. This is going to be weird for you now, isn’t it.”

Rey shook her head. “No. Well yeah, a little. Now I get why you’ve never brought it up.”

Rose shrugged. “It’s not a big deal for us,” she said. “I figured you had your own reasons for not wanting to discuss soulmate stuff. Which, clearly, you did. You do.” She looked at Rey as if she were asking permission for something.

“It’s fine, Rose,” Rey said with another sigh. “I can’t believe this is actually happening to me.”

“I still think you should find him again,” Rose said with a grin. “What’s the worst that could happen? You already called him a bag of dicks. You can only go up from there, right?”

 

* * *

 

“What crawled up your ass and died today?” Hux said by way of greeting when Ben got back to First Order Properties.

“Fuck off,” Ben said. He’d waited out the worst of his panic attack before slinking away and taking the long way back to the office. He still felt a little shaky, but the nerves were now replaced by anger, which was easily the most comfortable way for him to have a panic attack.

Hux snorted. This was hardly unusual behavior between them. They weren’t exactly enemies—Ben managed the legal department while Hux managed company growth and expansion—but they weren’t friends. “Boss wants to see you,” Hux said. “Said something about infiltrating that gardening company?”

_Fucking great. Just what I fucking need right now._ “I’ll be in in a minute,” he grumbled. He slung his sodden coat on the coatrack in his office and sat down in the chair, covering his face with his hands. What was he going to tell his boss? ‘Sorry, I know you sent me to learn more about this group, but I had to leave before I could find anything because my soulmate insulted me’? 

“You know he doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” Hux called when Ben didn’t move. “And I want to know what the deal with this group is. It impacts my department as well as yours.” It actually impacted Hux’s department more than it impacted his—it was more a business thing than a legal thing—but he hadn’t questioned Snoke when he’d given him the task. Ben always appreciated the excuse to get out of the office for a little while.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to take take slow, deep breaths. It was something his therapist had told him to work on. Dr Kalonia was well worth the $350/hour she charged, but nothing he’d been working on in therapy had prepared him for this particular situation.

“Solo,” Hux called again, more sharply this time.

Ben inhaled deeply and stood up. This was about as good as he was going to get before he had to face his boss.

“Look who finally decided to drop by,” Snoke said as Ben knocked on the door to his office. Ben resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Why did Snoke have to be so goddamn _dramatic_ about everything? He was acting like it had been weeks since Ben had left to go check out the Concrete Resistance demonstration instead of a couple of hours. “What did you find out about our elusive new competitor?”

“I don’t think they qualify as a competitor, sir,” Ben said before he could stop himself. He forced himself not to flinch as anger flickered across Snoke’s face. 

“Did I ask you what you _think,_ or what you _found out_?” Snoke hissed.

Ben clenched his hands under the table. He knew from experience that the longer these meetings went, the more likely it was that he would start gripping so tightly that his fingernails punctured the flesh on his palm. For all that Snoke had done for him, he made Ben’s anxiety skyrocket when he was in a mood like this. And lately, Snoke was always in a mood like this. “They had a decent turnout despite the rain,” Ben said. “I didn’t talk to any of the employees, but they were handing out information cards.” _Shit. He probably expects one of the cards now, and I’m going to get chewed out for not having one._ “I don’t know if they brought the whole company or not, but there were only eight or so employees there.”

Snoke nodded. “I am disappointed that you didn’t make any effort to talk to the employees, but no matter.” _Of course you fucking are._ “I want you to continue researching this company. Get one of Phasma’s assistants to help you. Gather as much information as you can so that we can start a plan to bring them down.”

Ben wanted to ask why this mattered so much—after all, Concrete Resistance was just a little start-up, and First Order Properties was worth billions—but he wanted to get the hell out of Snoke’s office more than he wanted to know why their so-called “new competitor” was such a problem. “Of course, sir,” he said. “Is that all?”

“I want as much information as you can get me tonight,” Snoke said. “Tomorrow, we start plotting to bring them down.” He waved Ben out of his office like he wasn’t being the biggest drama queen in the world after _that_ statement.

Ben had just enough time to call Phasma and ask her to send one of her lackeys—sorry, _assistants —_up to his office before Hux walked into his office and sat down in one of the spare chairs like he wasn’t interrupting Ben’s day, or anything.

“Why is this little gardening company such a big deal?” Hux asked. “There’s no way that you’re in a mood like this over normal competitor research.”

Ben sighed. “It’s a long story,” he said.

“I’ve got time.”

“Bullshit,” Ben said. “You’re just nosy.”

Hux shrugged, but he didn’t deny it. “Just doing my job,” he said. “Which is to keep an eye on competitors.”

“They’re not a competitor. They’re just doing something that people have tried before and actually succeeding, for some reason.”

“Ah,” said Hux, straightening up. “And Snoke expects you to fix it with some lawyer magic?”

“I didn’t go to law school to learn _magic,_ ” Ben said, but it was an argument so old that it was almost an inside joke between him and Hux. Which probably said something about where he was in life, that an old argument with a coworker could be considered an “inside joke.” _Goddamn, I_ really _need to call Dr Kalonia._ “He asked me to do some research, so I’m going to do some research. Now get the fuck out of my office.” Was he overreacting? Probably. Did he give a shit? No.

Hux opened his mouth to say something, but something in Ben’s expression must have made him change his mind about continuing the conversation. “Call me if you find anything,” he said as he stood up. “I want to be updated on this, too.”

“You’re not my boss,” Ben said to Hux’s retreating back.

He had enough time to pour himself a glass of emergency whiskey that he kept in a desk drawer, call his therapist, and send a couple of angry emails before someone else came in to interrupt his shittastic day. “What?” he barked at the intruder, not bothering to look up from his computer screen.

“Phasma sent me,” he said. “Something about a special research project?”

Ben looked up and locked eyes with a nervous-looking guy. “Oh, right,” he grumbled. “Come in and close the door behind you.”

Clearly, someone had briefed the research assistant on Ben’s legendary temper, because he was holding his laptop like a shield as he inched his way to the chair in front of Ben’s desk. “Can I…?” he asked, indicating the chair.

“Sit down and tell me what the hell you know about this company,” Ben said, not bothering to attempt to make the man feel more at ease.

“Sorry?”

“This company,” Ben said. “The one that Phasma sent you to research for me.”

“Oh,” he said, his eyes widening. “She, uh, she didn’t tell me what you needed me for. She just sent me up.”

Ben sighed. And now Phasma was fucking with him as well. Hux had probably told her what kind of mood Ben was in, and she was using someone else to ‘poke the bear’ by briefing her assistants on Ben’s temper, but not the actual job they needed to do. _Asshole._ “There’s a new company that’s starting to get in our way,” he said. “We need to bring them down, which means that we need to research them. And as I am very busy, _you_ are here to do the bulk of the research so that _I_ can start looking for legal loopholes to take them down with.”

“Right,” the research assistant said, opening his laptop. “Let’s start with google. What’s the company name?”

“Concrete Resistance,” Ben said. The name must have meant something to the research assistant, because his eyes widened briefly before he schooled his expression into something that was too casual for the amount of tension radiating from his posture. “You know them.”

The assistant gulped. “No, never heard of them,” he said. 

“You’re not a good liar, and I’m having a pretty fucking bad day. Do us both a favor and tell me the truth.” 

“I’m just going to go to google and search for their website,” he said. Ben had to give him credit. Not that the assistant looked at ease, but he didn’t look like he was about to shit himself, which was impressive, given Ben’s temper.

“You _will_ tell me what you know about Concrete Resistance,” Ben growled as the research assistant pulled up the website. It looked like your standard-issue hipster startup website: trendy splash image on the homepage, a “join our mailing list!” button, a million links to their app, and there, at the bottom of the screen, employee bios.

With photographs. 

Including the one of _her._

Ben grabbed the computer away from the research assistant before he even realized what he was doing so that he could get a closer look at _her._ “Rey Jakkusen,” he murmured, reading the little bio. _Computer programmer, cold-brew coffee addict, and general tech nerd._ It read like a twitter bio and gave away nothing that Ben cared to know about her. (Because he didn’t care to know anything about her. At all.)

“Sorry?” The sound of the assistant’s voice made Ben jump and nearly drop the laptop his his haste to act like he hadn’t just gotten oddly fixated on a random bio on the website.

“What do you know about this company?” Ben asked again. “Who are these people?” _Who is Rey?_ If this guy knew something about this company, did that mean that he knew _her_?

“They have a website and they make an app. That’s all I know. I promise.” 

Suddenly, Ben didn’t give a shit that he was lying through his teeth. Snoke wanted research done on this company? Fine. Ben would make the research assistant do it. And then he was going to go home, attempt (and probably fail) to resist the urge to punch a hole in the wall, and drink until he forgot that today had ever happened. “Whatever,” he said, standing up. “Get me everything you can find out about this company. I expect to have a full write-up on my desk by the time I get in tomorrow morning. Social media presence, employees, reputation, _anything_ we can use to take them down. Tell me I didn’t haul my ass down to a park in the rain for _nothing_ today.” It wasn’t until he was on his way out the door to the building that he realized he hadn’t even asked for the man’s name, which meant that he didn’t know who to blame when a half-assed report inevitably showed up on his desk tomorrow morning. _Great. One more thing I fucked up today._

 

* * *

 

“I think you could use a drink. Or five.”

Rey jumped at the sound of Rose’s voice coming from behind her. “What?”

“You haven’t been your usual vocal self today.” Rey would have protested, but Rose was right. Whenever Rey got caught up in a coding problem, she tended to sing along with whatever she was listening to. (She also had a tendency to talk to her computer, but that was a legitimate programming technique she’d picked up in university: talk your way through your code when you can’t figure out what’s going wrong.) And today…

Well, it hadn’t been the most productive day she’d ever had.

“Come on,” Rose said, sitting on the edge of Rey’s desk. “Wednesdays are half off margaritas at Rico Taco.”

“Can we order nachos?”

Rose grinned. “Does that mean you’re in?”

“Only if there are nachos.”

“With guac.”

Rey was already halfway through her first margarita when Rose’s phone rang. She stared at the drink, not paying attention to what Rose was saying until she hung up the phone. “Finn’s coming,” she said.

“Who’s Finn?”

“Oh,” Rose said, looking surprised. “I’m sorry! I didn’t even think—is it okay that I invited him?”

Rey shrugged. Having another person around to distract her from her little soulmate problem was probably a good—”Finn is my other soulmate,” Rose added.

_Okay. So that’s probably a ‘no’ on the distraction from the soulmate topic, then,_ Rey thought. “It’s fine,” she said. “Are Poe and Kaydel coming?”

“Nah, Kaydel’s still pretty sick so Poe’s staying in with her,” Rose said. “You’ll like Finn. I hope. Everyone does.”

“If he’s anything like you, I’m sure I will,” Rey said as she finished the drink. Halfway through her second drink, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she got back to the table, there was a man sitting next to Rose.

“Rey, this is Finn,” Rose said as Rey sat down across from them. “Finn, this is—”

“Holy shit,” Finn said, locking eyes with Rey. “It’s _you._ ”

Rey and Rose exchanged glances. “Have you two met?” Rose asked.

“No, but—see, this is why I need this drink,” Finn said as he took a sip of Rose’s margarita. “So you know my job sucks, right?”

“Finn works at some big corporate real estate firm,” Rose said.

“Right. It sucks. I’m quitting the second my student loans are paid off. Anyway, so today my boss sends me upstairs on a new research project. She doesn’t tell me what the project is, she just says ‘good luck, he’s in a mood.’ And I go to the office she sends me to and it’s the head of legal management at First Order. I’d never met this guy before, but I’d heard stories. His temper is legendary, and he has a gift for exploiting people and legal loopholes. I don’t think First Order Properties would do nearly as well without him, to be honest, but I also don’t think that he’s ever going to leave the company. Nobody else would put up with his shit, if the rumors about his temper are true.”

“What does this have to do with Rey?” Rose asked.

“I’m getting to that,” Finn said. “So I go into his office and he looks like he’s about to murder me. Nearly bites my head off when I tell him that I don’t know why Phasma sent me up there. And then he says ‘there’s a new company that’s about to get in our way and we need to do research to bring them down.’”

He paused to take another sip of Rose’s margarita, although Rey wondered if it wasn’t also for dramatic effect. Rose must have felt the same way, because she nudged him and said, “And?”

“And I go, ‘well what’s the company name?’ And he says ‘Concrete Resistance.’” Finn used Rey’s and Rose’s stunned silence as an excuse to drink the rest of Rose’s margarita.

“Your boss is making you do research on _our_ company so that _your_ company can bring us down?” hissed Rose. “We don’t even work in the same industry!”

“Oh, it gets better,” Finn said darkly, looking at Rey. “So I pull up the Concrete Resistance website and he scrolls down to the bottom of the page to where the company bios are. You guys all have really cute photos, by the way.”

“Story?” Rose prompted.

“I’m getting to it. The entire time, he _knows_ that I know something about the company, but I’m not saying anything because why the hell would I sell you guys out to him? But he won’t drop it. And then he gets a look at your bios, and something makes him lowkey lose his shit, because he grabs the computer, glaring daggers at _something_ on the screen, then he mutters ‘Rey Jakkusen’ like it _means_ something to him.”

Rose gave Rey a confused look. “Do you know anyone who works at First Order Properties?”

“I only know, like, eight people, period, and they’re all our coworkers. Well, nine, now,” she said, glancing at Finn. “What the hell could I possibly have done to get on the radar of some head of legal whatever?”

“Beats the hell outta me,” Finn said. “But now I’m stuck doing research on your company, which puts me in a really awkward position because I don’t want to tell him that I know three of their employees _very_ well because he’ll just try to make me tell him all your secrets.”

“Why does First Order think that we’re some kind of competitor, though?” Rose asked.

“I have no idea, but unfortunately, I’m probably about to find out. And this guy, Ben Solo, he’s fucking _terrifying._ Like, now that I’ve actually met him, I understand why people say the things they say about him. If First Order really does think that Concrete Resistance is some sort of competitor, he’s going to find some sort of legal loophole to manipulate in order to bring you guys down.”

“Relax,” Rose said, patting his hand. “We do everything by the book. We may be small, but we don’t cut corners.”

“Rose, you don’t understand,” Finn said. “He _knows_ I know something. And stars know why he’s fixated on Rey. It was —oh, wait,” he said suddenly. “Was your park demo today?”

Something must have clicked for Rose, because she glanced over at Rey before saying, “Finn, what does Ben Solo look like?”

_Oh, shit._ Rey had a bad feeling about this.

“He’s a tall white dude with great hair and a giant scar running down the side of his face. Early 30s. Wears a lot of black suits. Why?”

“No fucking way,” Rose breathed. “Rey, Ben Solo is—”

“Don’t say it,” Rey said. “Please don’t say it. I don’t want to know.”

“What?” Finn asked, clearly annoyed that he was missing something in the conversation. “Do you actually know him?”

“You could say that,” Rose said.

“I _don’t_ actually know him and I don’t _want_ to actually know him and Rose, he knows my _name_ and where I work. What am I going to _do_?”

The expression on Rose’s face told Rey that she was probably not the best person to talk to about soulmate stuff. Rose had a perfect soulmate situation times three. Poe, Kaydel, and Finn were all lovely people and there was no reason why any of them should have avoided meeting each other. Not that Rey had asked, but she was sure that their first words to each other had all been really friendly, setting them all up for a good, healthy relationship. So why did Rey have to get saddled with someone who had just been described to her as ‘fucking terrifying’? And why couldn’t Rose understand why Rey just wanted to let the whole thing go?

“And now you know _his_ name and where _he_ works. You have to go find him, Rey! You can’t just let him go. That’s how this whole system _works._ ”

“Hold on,” said Finn. “Why does she have to find him? What system?" 

“That is _not_ how the system works and I refuse to be a part of it. I’ve been trying to avoid him since I was sixteen years old. I’m not changing that now.”

“Hold on,” Finn said again. “Wait. Do you mean— _you_ and _him_ are —?”

“That’s _exactly_ what she means,” Rose said as Rey moaned pathetically and dropped her head onto the table.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a Rose/Poe/Finn/Kaydel OT4 because why the fuck not. Like there is literally no reason for it, it just kind of popped out when I was writing this. If you’re like me and wondering “wait, how does an OT4 work in a soulmates AU?” then don’t worry - I’m writing a companion piece about their relationship.
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: How often do you think people have platonic (or other non-romantic) soulmates? And yes, when I ask these questions, I’d love to hear what you guys think!


	3. So much for “corporate espionage”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snoke has no idea how tech jobs work, and the universe won’t stop fucking with Ben and Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay you probably hear this from every author, but THANK YOU for all of your lovely kudos and comments! It makes me so happy to hear that you guys are enjoying this silly AU, and I love reading about what you guys think about soulmate AU worldbuilding!

The only thing worse than a meeting with Snoke first thing in the morning was a meeting with Snoke first thing in the morning while hungover. 

“Tell me you found something out about that resistance company,” Snoke said with a deceptively pleasant smile on his face. Ben knew from experience that the calmer he looked, the more likely he was to fly off the handle without any notice.

Ben had actually tried to use a healthy coping mechanism (for once) after the horrendously bad day he’d had yesterday by going to the boxing gym, but the owner kicked him out after Ben nearly broke his sparring partner’s arm. “You’re even more unhinged than normal, man,” the gym owner had said. “Get the fuck out of here until you cool off.” So Ben had gotten the fuck out of there and proceeded to self-medicate with alcohol. There was something dangerously addictive about unhealthy coping mechanisms. (He’d added that to the list of ‘things I need to discuss with Dr Kalonia this week’ as soon as he’d woken up with the raging hangover.) Getting wasted alone in his apartment on a Wednesday night had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, faced with his boss’s overdramatics, he was sorely regretting that decision.

“The research assistant Phasma’s loaning me looked into their social media presence,” Ben said. “Their website is a typical start-up website, but it does list all of the employees with their photos. We already know that they’re headquartered in this city. We could probably track down the employees, if we really wanted.” He didn’t mention that the research assistant—whose name he still hadn’t figured out—knew something about Concrete Resistance that he wasn’t telling. No sense in getting Snoke’s hopes up. With Ben’s luck, if he said something to Snoke, the “lead” would just be something like “the research assistant went on an unsuccessful Tinder date with an employee there once,” which was not at all helpful.

“Interesting,” Snoke said, nodding slowly. “I want information on the individual employees. Figure out which ones are most crucial to their operations. If we can poach one of their most important employees—which we _can_ and _will_ do; after all, we can pay much better than some measly start-up —then we can cripple them before we take them down.”

That was...not a bad idea, actually. Except for the part where Ben had no desire to go anywhere near the employees of Concrete Resistance ever again.

“All due respect, sir,” Ben said, “isn’t that something Hux is more suited for? I hardly think this is a legal matter.”

“Hux is very busy with a project of his own. And anyway, I’m sure you can find some sort of legal loophole if you look. Send Phasma’s assistant off to stalk the employees, if you really need the help.” Snoke’s expression said exactly what he thought of Ben’s attempt to escape this “simple” task.

_Oh,_ hell _no. Not that tone of voice._ Ben couldn’t let Snoke think that he wasn’t up for the job. “They have a programmer,” he found himself blurting out. _Fuck. I shouldn’t have told him that._ Ben had zero poker face, and Snoke had an uncanny ability to drag the truth out of people. If he even suspected there was something unusual about this situation, he’d —

“A programmer?” There it was, the tone dripping with disgust and disappointment. “Solo, they’re a start-up. _Of course_ they have a programmer.”

“Just one programmer,” he said, a drunken memory making it through his hangover haze. Right. Drunk Ben was an idiot who couldn’t resist the urge to pull up the Concrete Resistance website and overanalyze the photo and short bio for Rey Jakkusen. Hungover Ben refused to consider why Drunk Ben had thought that was necessary. “They’re a start-up with a single programmer. If she leaves, then…”

Snoke’s face cracked into the type of grin that should have been reserved for cartoon villains, but somehow managed to exist in real life. If he hadn’t been completely bald and clean-shaven, Ben would have expected him to start twirling his mustache. “‘She’?” he said. “Excellent. That’s your task then, Solo. Find that programmer. Convince her to come work for us. We can always use another tech support agent.” Ben wanted to tell him that there was a huge difference between computer programmers and tech support, but he was growing more and more nauseous by the minute, and damned if he let himself throw up in front of his boss. Like he needed something else to make him seem weak in front of Snoke.

“So you just want me to find her and offer her a job in tech support?” he said. _Oh, shit._ The nausea was intensifying. He needed a large coffee and a disgustingly greasy breakfast sandwich, stat. And since Kanata Brews was now out of the question…

“Offer her a job. Seduce her. Whatever. She’s a woman working in tech. She must know that women don’t _really_ belong there. Eventually, she’ll get tired of working anyway. She may as well take a well-paying job before she inevitably settles down to be a housewife.”

Okay. Some of the nausea was definitely from the tone of this conversation as well as the hangover. And there was no _way_ Snoke knew about the connection between Ben and Rey Jakkusen…

Right?

“I can do that,” he said. “Is that all?” _Please say yes so that I can go be miserable and hungover in peace._

“For now,” Snoke said, sitting back in his chair. “You’re dismissed. And Solo,” he added just as Ben was halfway out the door. “I expect _results._ And soon.” And just to really hammer in the nail, he turned around in his chair to look out the giant window overlooking the city.

Stars, his boss was _such_ an ass.

 

* * *

 

“What’s this I hear about you and some lawyer who’s trying to destroy us?” Poe said in a too-casual tone the next morning.

Rey groaned. Without her normal pre-work stop at Kanata Brews, she was struggling. Starbucks just didn’t quite cut it, and she had gone a little hard on the margaritas last night. Whether it was Rose or Finn who had told Poe the story, Rey didn’t care. “Leave me alone,” she said as she buried her face in her hands. “I’m hungover and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Your hangover? No one wants to talk about your hangover. That’s boring. This lawyer, on the other hand…”

If Rey hadn’t been so desperate to avoid the whole conversation, she might have laughed at Poe’s not-so-subtle attempt to dig for information. “There’s nothing to talk about,” Rey said. “I don’t know which of them told you the story, but I’m not pursuing it and I do _not_ want to find him again.” 

“Come on,” Poe said, leaning in to whisper. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious about him?” 

“Did Rose tell you what our first words to each other were?” Poe’s confused expression said no. Finn must have told him the story, not Rose. “They were a bunch of insults, and then we exchanged equally horrified expressions, and then he disappeared into the rain. For the good of both of us.” Now that she’d had a little time to think about it, Rey couldn’t help but be bothered by the fact that he had just left her like that. Sure, she’d done the same to him, but...well, it was much easier to abandon than be abandoned by.

What was it about her that made people leave her behind?

_Shit, if I follow that line of thought, I’m going to cry in the office,_ Rey thought. She made a mental note to call her therapist as soon as Poe left her alone.

“He works for a big real estate corporation. Finn said he’s, like, in charge of it. If we—and by ‘we’ I mean ‘you’—can get him on our side, he’ll be a huge help in our credibility. Just think about how that would look to investors if we had chief executive something at a real estate company like First Order Properties vouching for what we’re trying to do.”

He had a point. That didn’t mean that Rey was going to go for it, though.

“What do you think I’m going to do? Clearly he was just as horrified of me as I was of him, considering he walked off before even telling me his name.” _Ben Solo._ Rey couldn’t get over the fact that she now had a name, a face, and a reaction to go along with the words etched on her collarbone. 

_Ben Solo._ It had a nice ring to it. _No, stop. Do_ not _follow that train of thought any further._

“But you know _his_ name now. _And_ where he works. And he’s already investigating us, according to Finn. How can you _not_ want to pursue anything with the guy? The universe has deemed him —”

“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Rey said. “I told Rose and Finn last night, I don’t want any part of this system. Judging from his reaction yesterday, he doesn’t, either.”

Something about her tone must have told Poe to back off, because he held up his hands in mock surrender and said “Just think about it” before backing off. “Please.”

Rey stuck her headphones in her ears, turned on her “chill electronic favorites” playlist, and attempted to dive back into her current coding problem. _How to use location services to connect people without running into legal or security issues._ Normally, once she got started on something like this, she could hyperfocus for hours, getting completely tangled in the code. But doing research on what they were legally allowed to do wasn’t nearly as interesting as coding, and with everything she was trying not to think about, she wasn’t getting anything done. _May as well run out for coffee,_ she thought with a slight grimace. She had no idea what other coffee shops there were nearby aside from Starbucks, so she did a quick internet searched and chose one at random, praying that they had a decent cold brew coffee. It wasn’t the closest coffee shop, but the walk did Rey some good. Hopefully, no one at the office was going to miss her for a little while.

Takodana Cafe had some sort of greenhouse theme going on with their decor, and Rey couldn’t hold back a snort. _How fitting,_ she thought as she took in the sight of the spider plants hanging from the ceiling. She’d have to suggest this to Poe sometime if they ever needed a coffee shop to host another demo in.

Something—well, some _one —_caught Rey’s eye as she walked up to the counter to order. “Hey, Finn,” she said, waving at where he was sitting at a table in the back. He looked up at her and gave her a half wave before mouthing at her _Act like you don’t know me and get out of here._ Rey frowned. Had he only been nice to her the night before for Rose’s sake?

Again: what _was_ it about her that made people abandon her?

Well, fuck that. Rey came here for a coffee, and she was going to get her goddamn coffee before she left. She narrowed her eyes at Finn, unsure of why he was telling here to leave. Why—

“Oh, fuck.”

Rey whirled around at the sound of the voice behind her. _No. No fucking way. It can’t be — _

“It’s _you._ Again.”

The sight of Ben Solo towering over her ( _Seriously, why is he so tall, and why do I find that so attract —NO_) explained Finn’s weird gestures. He was trying to save her from running into Solo.

_Of all the fucking coffee shops in this fucking city, and he chooses this one._ Some rational part of Rey’s brain knew that she had no right to get possessive over a coffee shop, of all things, but the irrational part that had taken the wheel wasn’t listening. And the irrational part was going off in fifty different directions, the most embarrassing of which had her looking him up and down, taking him in. She’d never seen him up close at Kanata Brews, and all of the rain yesterday had prevented her from really getting a good look at him. Was he actually that attractive, or was it just the reaction of some deeply buried part of her brain that actually-kind-of-maybe bought into the soulmate thing?

But it wasn’t like he wasn’t blatantly checking her out either, and a proud, vain part of Rey was glad that she’d taken the time this morning to throw on some makeup, despite the mild hangover. Like hell she was let him see her in anything other than well-dressed perfection.

_Say something,_ she told herself. _This staring contest needs to stop._ “I have every right to be here as you,” she blurted.

He blinked, a confused expression crossing his face before it shifted to anger. It occurred to Rey that maybe he didn’t know that she always went to Kanata Brews at the same time as him, and maybe he’d never noticed her before yesterday. Something about the idea of her having an accidental one-sided coffee shop crush made her irrationally angry, and she could feel her face heating up.

“I never said you didn’t,” he said in a flat tone. “Now move. I’d like to get my coffee.” She didn’t know how to interpret the look on his face that he was obviously trying and failing to hide. Maybe he had the same problem that she had hiding her facial expressions. _Well, that would actually make sense, if you really are —NO. _ Her stupid brain needed to _stop_ going down those lines of thought.

The irrational part of her brain still had control of the wheel, and it refused to do anything he told her to do, so she glared at him instead. His eye twitched, then he leaned over her to grab his coffee. Rey got a whiff of something—soap, cologne? Whatever it was, it smelled annoyingly good—as he leaned over her, and she jerked back suddenly, knocking his arm and causing him to drop his giant, hot coffee all over her.

 

* * *

 

Ben had done a lot of embarrassing things in his life. Like that one time in college, when he’d accidentally locked himself out of his own apartment after a night of drinking and ended up spending the night passed out on the doormat. Or that time he’d accidentally hit himself in the head with a baseball bat in his ninth grade gym class.

Neither of those moments came anywhere _near_ the sight of Rey Jakkusen standing before him, covered in a large cup of coffee that he’d spilled on her.

It was awkward enough running into her like that. Ben had always hated the idea of fate, but something out there had a sick sense of humor to not only make Coffee Shop Girl his soulmate, but to make her a soulmate who was avoiding him as much as he was avoiding her (which was fair; he was kind of a walking disaster) and then sticking them in the same coffee shop at the same time after he’d made the decision to find a new one so that he could avoid ever seeing her again.

In true Ben Solo fashion, instead of doing something reasonable like apologizing, he glared at her. “Seriously? You _had_ to get in my way and then force me to drop my coffee on you? What the fuck is your problem?”

“What the fuck is _your_ problem?” she shouted. “You just dropped a giant cup of hot coffee on me!” He couldn’t help but notice the way that the coffee had soaked through the light green shirt she was wearing, revealing the outline of what looked like a lacy bra. _No. Do NOT look,_ he told himself as he forced his eyes to snap back to hers. _Not fair._

“Hey, guys,” Finn (Ben had finally figured out the research assistant’s name after reading through his inbox after his meeting with Snoke) said with a nervous laugh. He held his jacket out to Rey. She broke the glare she was giving to Ben to take his jacket, muttering a thanks to him. “Just give it to Rose,” he said to her. “Or Poe or Kaydel.”

Holy shit. Finn _knew_ Rey? Ben had known that Finn knew something about Concrete Resistance, but he never thought he’d know _her._  

What the _fuck_ was the universe doing, messing with him like this?

He zoned back in to see Finn handing Rey his coffee and murmuring something to her before she gave him a small smile. She gave Ben one final glare before turning and leaving in a huff. He watched her leave, trying to process the whole situation.

“Okay, look,” Finn said quickly. Ben snapped his eyes back to look at him, taking note of his still-nervous expression. “Before you say anything, yes, I know her, and yes, I know what she is to you.” 

Great. So not only did the research assistant who had been randomly assigned to help him research some stupid startup that his stupid soulmate happened to work at knew people who worked at said stupid startup, but he also knew Rey Jakkusen and he knew _what she was to Ben._

“I’m going to get us both another coffee,” Finn said when Ben didn’t respond. “You should probably go sit down,” he added as a barista started to wipe up the spilled coffee.

Sitting down was probably a good idea. So was figuring out what to say to Finn about all this. Or, hell, what to _ask_ Finn about all this. Weirdly, Ben found that even though he wanted to avoid Rey at all costs, he was also curious to know what Finn knew about her. Also, there was the thing where Snoke had told him to poach her from Concrete Resistance. (Ben was ignoring the suggestion to seduce her into leaving because there was no way that even _considering_ that option was going to end well for anyone.)

Frustratingly, he’d dragged Finn out to get coffee as a distraction from what Snoke had said. It was easier to ignore his boss’s words when he wasn’t physically in the same building as Snoke, and anyway, if Finn knew something about Concrete Resistance (which, clearly, he knew a lot of things about it), Ben wanted to have that conversation as far away from the prying ears and eyes of Armitage Hux as possible. This was his assignment, dammit, as much as he hated it.

“So,” Finn said as he put a coffee down in front of Ben, forcing him out of his mess of thoughts. “Rey Jakkusen.”

Ben cringed. _On second thought, maybe I_ don’t _want to have this conversation._

“Okay, obviously I lied yesterday when I said I didn’t know anything about Concrete Resistance. I do. I’m, uh, very close with a couple of their employees.”

Ben narrowed his eyes. “Close how?” he said. Was he... _dating_ Rey? _No, that can’t possibly be it._ What a weird thought to have, and what a weird flash of...was that jealousy? _What the fuck?_

Finn looked torn about something, but then he said, “Okay, if I’m going to tell you _anything_ about Rey or Concrete Resistance, can you promise me that you won’t use any of this in your little research project?”

Ben frowned. “No,” he said. “I can’t promise that. I was given an assignment by Snoke, and I have to complete it.”

Finn sighed. “See, now this is a huge conflict of interest for me, and this is why I didn’t want you knowing that I knew anything about them.” 

“How do you know Rey?”

“Coincidentally, I didn’t until yesterday,” he said. “I met her through, uh, a friend.”

“More than a friend, judging by your tone.”

“Look man, don’t you have friends to talk about this stuff with?”

Ben blinked. Friends? He couldn’t imagine discussing this with Hux or Phasma. The thought alone made him cringe. “I...no,” he muttered, suddenly very interested in his coffee. “Look,” he said, unable to make eye contact with Finn. “Snoke knows that she’s the only programmer they have on staff. He wants me to convince her to come work for us in tech support. The pay’s much better than anything a little startup can offer.” As terrified as he was of failing to follow Snoke’s orders, the words felt hollow, somehow. Snoke had no idea about the connection between Ben and Rey ( _right?_ ), but Ben hated the idea of taking advantage of it to try to stick her into the wrong kind of job. If she had gone out in the rain to a demonstration of what that company stood for, she probably had a lot of company loyalty. And anyway, it wasn’t like Ben was doing a good job of getting into her good graces. (Not that he wanted to.) 

Finn raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking me to pass that message along? Because I’m not a carrier pigeon. I’m not telling my soul—” His eyes widened as he realized what he’d let slip.

“That’s how you know that company so well!” hissed Ben. “ _Your_ soulmate works there.”

Again: what the _fuck_ was the universe doing to him?

“Shit,” Finn muttered. “Yes, that’s how I know that company. And no, I am not telling my soulmate’s best friend to come work for First Order. If you’re so curious about Rey, maybe you should, I don’t know, _apologize_ for spilling coffee all over her and then ask her yourself.”

Ben didn’t respond. On one hand, he didn’t want to have a conversation acknowledging anything about the situation, especially with the research assistant who had a connection to Rey who had been randomly assigned to his project. He barely knew the guy. Why bother telling him anything about himself, especially things that Ben didn’t even like discussing with his therapist? 

On the other hand, Ben didn’t have any _actual_ friends, and he kind of wanted someone to talk about this with. Not that he’d ever admit it aloud, but he needed all the help he could get with this situation.

“I don’t want anything to do with her,” Ben muttered, but even he could tell how unconvincing he sounded.

“Clearly,” Finn said in a tone that indicated how little he actually believed it. “Are you going to fire me for refusing to tell you about Concrete Resistance?”

Ben had actually fired people for less than that. “Why, do you _want_ me to fire you?”

“I’d like to not be unemployed, so no.”

Somehow, Ben wasn’t surprised to hear that Finn didn’t have much company loyalty. He’d fired people for less than that, too. “I can’t go back to Snoke with nothing,” he warned.

“So you want to avoid her, but you also want to convince her to come work for First Order? Good luck figuring that out.”

_I don’t have time for this,_ Ben thought. As much as he didn’t want to do it, he was more afraid of failing to follow Snoke’s orders than he was of getting to know the woman who had called him a ‘corporate bag of dicks.’ “I won’t fire you,” he said, the ‘yet’ evident in his tone. “But I need you to arrange a meeting. I have to talk to her.” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and held out a business card.

“I told you, I’m not a carrier pigeon.” Ben looked up and met his eyes, holding him in a stare. “Fine,” Finn finally said, unable to take Ben’s glare any longer. “I’ll give her your card. But that’s _all_ I’ll do for you.”

Well. It was a start.

A terrifying, embarrassing, irritating start.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This author does not condone drinking your feelings away. (Hangovers are the _worst_ , y’all.)
> 
> Also, I know nothing about property law or what kind of data privacy laws there are regarding location services on apps, so we’re gonna say that maybe this is specific to this universe.
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: is it possible for two people to be connected as soulmates while being bad for each other in a relationship? What do you think that might look like?


	4. So much for “conflict of interest”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben are too stubborn to handle themselves, and everyone uses food poisoning as an excuse to get out of work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a chapter a day early because I'll be on the road this week. Back to our regular "Monday updates" schedule next week!

“What happened to you?” Rose asked as Rey stalked back into the office, still covered in coffee. “And—wait, is that _Finn’s_ jacket? How the hell did you get his jacket?”

“Ben fucking Solo is what happened to me,” Rey growled. “Stars know why he and Finn were together, and stars know why they had to choose the same exact coffee shop as me. That douchebag dumped an entire cup of coffee on me and then blamed _me_ for it. Seriously, I go through all the trouble of finding a new coffee shop so that I can avoid him, and he just so _happens_ to be in the same goddamn coffee shop at the same goddamn time as me.”

“Oh wow,” Rose said as Rey unzipped the jacket to show her the half-dried coffee stain.

“Yeah, pretty much. I’m taking the rest of the day off. Tell Poe I have food poisoning, or something.” She threw her work laptop in her bag and zipped Finn’s jacket back up without waiting for a response. Of all days to wear a thin, light-colored shirt. Rey hadn’t missed the look Ben had given her when the coffee soaked through enough of the shirt to make it stick to her skin, revealing the outline of the bra she was wearing. (What? She’d needed the extra confidence boost of knowing she was dressed well this morning.) _Shit, that was so embarrassing_.

Her therapist had suggested that exercise would be a good outlet for her anger a couple of months ago, and Rey had picked up kickboxing. It was probably a little more aggressive than her therapist had intended, but some days she just really needed the adrenaline rush that only a good fight could give her. She dropped her bag off at home, threw her coffee-stained shirt in the sink to soak, and went to the gym. An hour and a half later had Rey slinking back to her apartment, her muscles already hurting from the pummeling she’d given (and received).

How _dare_ he invade _her_ personal space just to get a fucking cup of coffee, dump said cup of coffee all over her, and then yell at _her_ for it? What the hell was his _problem_? Finn had said that he was ‘fucking terrifying.’ But was he that rude to everyone, or just her?

And speaking of...what the hell was _Finn_ doing there? Had he told Solo anything about her after she’d left?

_Stars, this situation is fucked._ Well, the exercise hadn’t completely gotten it out of her system. Time for Plan B: smoke a bowl and watch stupid TV until her brain started to melt.

Hours later, Rey was going down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos (she found an entire genre of “listening to a loop of fictional spaceship sounds for hours on end” videos) when her phone rang, jolting out of the half-asleep trance that a video of Millennium Falcon sounds had put her in. She didn’t look at the number before picking up the phone, assuming that it was Rose or Poe calling her about work stuff. “Hello?” she mumbled into the phone.

“Hey, Rey,” a male voice that Rey couldn’t place said. “It’s Finn. I got your number from Rose.”

Rey pushed herself up off the couch and paused the YouTube video. “Oh, hi. Is this about the jacket? I left the office in a hurry earlier and took it with me. I’ll give it to Rose tomorrow, I promise. Thanks again for lending it to me,” she added in a mumble. Talking to Finn was bringing back the exact reason why she was currently laying on the couch instead of grabbing a post-work drink with Rose.

“Sort of,” he said. “Listen, are you home right now? Rose said you were pretty upset when you left the office earlier. I’ll bring you a pizza.”

Despite everything, Rey smiled. “Pizza sounds good,” she said. She was in no mood to cook, and she could never say no to food. She gave Finn her address, and he told her he’d see her in about half an hour.

Exactly thirty minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Rey opened it, feeling a little impressed by Finn’s timing. “Pizza delivery,” he said, holding up a box. She led him to her tiny kitchen and grabbed a couple of plates.

“Thanks for bringing me something to eat,” she said as she took a slice. She wanted to demand answers about _why_ he had been with Ben Solo earlier, but she had to do it right. Finn seemed nice enough, and Rey liked Rose enough to give her soulmate a chance to explain himself.

After a few minutes of eating in silence, Finn cleared his throat. “Okay, so I had an ulterior motive in bringing you pizza,” he said.

Rey looked up, a slice halfway to her mouth. “Is this about the jacket?” 

“Not really,” Finn said. “Everyone’s making me a carrier pigeon today. Rose told me to bring you pizza since she’s caught up in a work thing and can’t bring it herself. Poe told me to ask you again if you would consider trying to convince Solo to support us, which, for the record, I think is a terrible idea for many reasons, but I’m passing on the message anyway out of love and respect for him and his opinions.”

Rey groaned. “Poe has no idea what Solo is like, and if he did, he’d stop asking me that.”

Finn grimaced. “On that note, I had one more message I promised I’d pass on.” He reached into his pocket and took out a card. “For whatever reason, Solo hasn’t fired me yet, despite now knowing my connection to the company I’m supposed to be helping him research as a competitor and knowing that I won’t give him any information on you guys. I told him I’d pass on his card to you, but I wouldn’t do anything else. It’s up to you whether or not you call him.”

Rey stared at the card. _Ben Solo. Executive Head of Market Consulting and Legal Management. First Order Properties. 1-093-555-7827. ben.solo@firstorder.com._ It was done in a minimalistic style that seemed at odds with the angry, intense vibe she’d gotten from him.

She couldn’t bring herself to pick the card up from the table, though. Picking it up would mean acknowledging it, and acknowledging it would mean that she’d have to make a decision about whether or not she wanted to contact him. “What do you think I should do?” she asked Finn.

“Me?” he said. “I don’t know. Honestly, if you want to pass a message on to him, please don’t ask me to do so. I’m already uncomfortable with how involved in this I am. It’s none of my business, and as it is, I need to start looking for a new job. No amount of pay is worth sticking around if I have to deal with this sudden massive conflict of interest.”

“Why were you at that coffee shop with him, if you hate working with him?”

Finn shrugged. “He stormed in and demanded that we go get coffee. He didn’t want to discuss anything until we were outside of the office. I don’t think he likes working at First Order, either. I doubt he’s going to quit, though. He’s too loyal to his boss. And then you walked in, and then after you left, I had to explain to him how I knew you. I didn’t tell him anything about you, just that I knew you through Rose,” he added quickly. 

Rey let out a breath that she didn’t realize she was holding. Finn was right, it wasn’t fair to stick him in the middle of this. And since he wouldn’t tell Solo anything about her...was it okay for her to ask Finn about Solo?

But he wasn’t done talking. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but for whatever reason, you both seem more determined to avoid each other than you actually are.”

That surprised Rey. She was 100% determined to avoid him.

Wasn’t she?

When she didn’t respond, Finn said, “Would it make you feel any better if I told you that I didn’t want to immediately jump into a relationship with Rose, Poe, and Kaydel, once I met them?”

“Really? But you’re all so... _nice._ ” What could possibly make Finn avoid his other soulmates?

“I promise that we don’t sit around and talk about you, but Rose told me that you grew up without a family, too.”

_Too?_ Finn grew up in the foster care system? “You did?”

He nodded. “I don’t like talking about it, and I doubt you do, either, so stop me if you don’t want to discuss it.” When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “I didn’t know how to be close to people. I have no idea who my parents are or why they didn’t want me and I never stuck around in one home for very long growing up. And then suddenly I met these people, this _family_ , and I was supposed to just fit right in with them, because they’d all already met and we were all destined to be together, or whatever. Hell, Poe and Kaydel _grew up_ together. And yeah, there was a connection there from the beginning, but it took a while before I started to feel comfortable in our relationship, and it was a long time before I was ready to move in with them.” He paused and added softly, “Just because he’s your soulmate doesn’t mean you have to fall in love with him right away. Or at all, really.”

That was...really reassuring, actually. Rey had always assumed that relationships with soulmates were simple. After all, the universe had already calculated who your perfect match (or matches) were. That took a lot of the guessing out of it, right?

“I’m not saying you have to give him a chance, because you are absolutely not obligated to do anything like that and quite honestly, I’m not even sure he deserves it. And I promise I won’t give him your phone number, or tell him how to contact you. I’m just saying that relationships, even between soulmates, can be more complicated than most people will admit. And if you feel like giving him a chance, you now have his number.”

 

* * *

 

Ben spent the next three days constantly on edge. Rey hadn’t made any move to contact him, and Finn wouldn’t say anything about it other than “I gave her your card, like I said I would, but I didn’t tell her anything else.” And Snoke was breathing down his neck about this project and the fifty other projects Ben had going on, saying that Ben needed to focus on bringing “that damn gardening company down.”

Instead of focusing on Rey (because he refused to sink so low as to actually _stalk_ her), he was looking for legal loopholes. According to their website, Concrete Resistance didn’t have any lawyers on staff, which meant that they were most likely breaking some law somewhere without realizing it. But, frustratingly, Ben couldn’t find any evidence of that without getting a closer look at their operations, and he couldn’t do that without Finn’s help. And Finn had called out sick on Friday, claiming he had food poisoning, which Ben _knew_ was a lie and that by now Finn was most likely frantically looking for a new job, but he couldn’t bring himself to stoop low enough to show up at Finn’s apartment, looking for answers.

And Ben _still_ didn’t have anyone to talk about this to. He was too busy with work to make an appointment with his therapist, and the only person he knew who knew what was going on aside from Rey was avoiding him for obvious reasons. Ben had never really given a shit about his reputation before because it was easier to avoid making friends than it was to admit that he was secretly kind of lonely, but he was starting to wonder if that was really the best way to go about life. _Huh. Some of what Dr Kalonia says is starting to make sense now._ (Was that progress? He hoped that it was progress.)

The lack of phone call or text message from Rey was driving Ben so crazy that on Sunday morning, he broke his phone by throwing it at the wall in a fit of frustration. So Sunday afternoon had him driving around looking for a store that had the exact kind of phone he liked in stock (because why settle for anything less than what he wanted?). And then he got the new phone and found that he didn’t want to activate it if all he was going to do was try not to obsess about the fact that Rey hadn’t called when he’d really given her no reason to actually want to talk to him in the first place. So it was a surprise when he finally activated his new phone on Monday morning and had a missed call and a voicemail from a number he didn’t recognize buried in all of the other calls from Hux, Phasma, Snoke, and various other First Order Properties employees. 

_Why am I getting so excited about this?_ he thought as he stared at the notifications. _It’s probably just a wrong number call._ Heart pounding, he hit the ‘listen to voicemail’ icon on the phone.

“ _Hi, uh. This is awkward. Oh, this is Rey. Rey Jakkusen. Your —yeah. Finn gave me your card. I’m honestly not even sure if this is a good idea because I stand by what I said, you’re a bag of dicks and you owe me a new shirt, and—shit, sorry, I probably shouldn’t insult you again. That’s kinda rude. Anyway, do you want to...I don’t know, talk sometime? I’m sure you’re really busy because you’re, like, executive manager of whatever, but we should probably talk. Um. Call me. I guess. Bye.” _

Ben felt his cheeks heat up. Yeah, dumping coffee on her—even if it was a little bit her fault for moving so suddenly—was not his finest moment. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have the money to buy her a shirt. (Would that be weird, randomly giving her a shirt? That would be weird. Right?)

But Rey wanted to talk. Which was something.

Well okay, it was something that kind of terrified him because the only reason he wanted to talk to her was so that he could follow his boss’s orders, so it was maybe a bit misleading to act like this wasn’t just a business thing. But just because the universe had deemed that she was “destined” to be with him didn’t mean that they wanted to date each other, right? Besides, he was always so busy with work and his personal life was a mess and he didn’t even know how to have friends, let alone...whatever it was that Rey maybe-wanted them to be. So even if he _was_ interested in her —which he _wasn’t_ , aside from business stuff—it wouldn’t be fair to saddle her with the disaster that was his life. And then there was the whole thing where his last relationship had ended almost a decade ago so he was completely out of practice with this sort of thing, but— _No, this is_ not _about dating, and I am_ not _going to pursue a relationship with her._

Not that he had any idea what the hell he was going to say to her, but he had to call her back before he started to overthink the whole thing too much. Besides, ‘playing hard to get’ was just as bullshit as everything else where soulmates were concerned. And anyway, he had to get into her good graces if he was going to convince her to come work for him. 

The phone rang twice before she picked up. “Hello?”

Was it just Ben’s imagination, or did she sound nervous? “Hi, Rey. It’s Ben. Solo. Ben Solo.” _That was stupid. She has your number. She knows it’s you. You’re already off to a great start, dumbass._

“Oh, uh, hi.” There was a pause. Rey apparently didn’t know what to say to him, either. 

_Quick, think of something to say. Anything._ “You said we should —” he said at the same time as she said “Do you want to—You first.”

“You said we should talk,” he said.

“Right. Yes, I did.”

Another pause.

“Can I buy you lunch?” _Shit, no. That sounds like you’re asking her on a — _

“I didn’t mean we should go out on a date,” she said quickly.

“No, no, of course not,” he said, scrambling to salvage his pride. “I mean, we should talk, and I owe you for spilling coffee on you, but not as, like, a date.” _Smooth. Real smooth._

“Right,” she said again. “Sure. You can buy me lunch. You free at one today?”

He had a million meetings today, but whatever. If anyone gave him shit for it, he’d just say he was working on a project for Snoke. Because he was. That was all this was. Convince Rey Jakkusen to leave Concrete Resistance and work for First Order Properties in a completely different job role than the one she currently held solely for the purpose of bringing Concrete Resistance down.

_Yeah, that pitch needs work._

“1PM works. How far are you from downtown? There’s a restaurant on D’Qar Ave that does all day breakfast.” _Is she into all day breakfast? Or are you just making assumptions based on her caffeine addiction, which you should probably not acknowledge that you know about her?_

“Qui-Gon’s Kitchen? They make the _best_ blueberry pancakes.”

“Coffee’s not bad, either.” _Good going, idiot. Remind her of how much of an asshole you are._

He didn’t know how to interpret the slight pause at the other end of the line before Rey said, “Yeah, it’s not bad.” It was probably just that she was still pissed off about the coffee incident on Thursday, but...had she also made the connection to Kanata Brews?

“Cool. So see you at one?”

“Qui-Gon’s Kitchen at one today. Got it.”

Ben let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as he hung up the phone. His anxiety-fueled inner monologue had _not_ helped with that phone call. Said anxiety-fueled inner monologue was going to have a fucking _field day_ today with this lunch.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There actually is a video on YouTube titled "[Millennium Falcon Ambient Engine Sound for 12 Hours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P93kbL0G0ww),” believe it or not.
> 
> Bit of a shorter chapter today, but that's just how I had to break it up. Check back in next Monday to see what happens on Ben and Rey's not-date. (Spoiler alert: it goes about as well as you'd expect.)
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: Do you think people ever make a mistake and end up trying to date the “wrong” person because their first words to each other match, even though they’re “meant” to be spoken by someone else?


	5. So much for "this isn't a date"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben go on a not-date. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I channeled every single awkward first date I’ve ever been on to write this.
> 
> On a more serious note, y'all, it puts the biggest smile on my face to get your comments and kudos, so thank you so much! The lovely SulaRae made me a moodboard for this fic and if you aren't reading her reporter!Ben and Rey AU, "[Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14506650/chapters/33515232)," you absolutely should be.

Ben was so anxious about getting lunch with Rey ( _relax, it’s not a date, you’re not trying to date her, it’s just business_ ) that he was ten minutes early to Qui-Gon’s Kitchen. Which was either going to give her the impression that he didn’t work hard at all or that he was willing to drop everything the second she looked his way, neither of which were a good option. He paused as he neared the diner, checking the time on his phone. Should he walk a lap around the block to kill time? Or should he just go in and get a table? Or should he—

“Uh, hi, Ben.” The sound of Rey’s voice made him jump, knocking him out of his anxiety spiral. He looked up to see her standing in front of him, wearing a yellow t-shirt and black jeans. It was casual and simple and it looked way too good on her and he suddenly felt overdressed in the same suit he’d worn to work that day.

_Shit. I’m checking her out. This is definitely turning into a date._ “Hi, Rey,” he said, forcing himself to stick his phone back in his pocket so that he stopped fiddling nervously with it. “Shall we?”

She gave him a tight smile, but she didn’t say anything as they entered the diner and sat down in a booth.

They browsed the menus in silence, even though Ben practically had the thing memorized and ordered the exact same thing every time he went there anyway. It gave him something to do other than try to figure out what she was thinking, but he found himself studying her anyway as she stared down at the menu. He’d never seen anyone wear a hairstyle like hers with the three buns. It was...not _cute_. Quirky? Charming? Not cute, though. He refused to call it cute.

“I don’t know why I bother reading the menu,” she said, closing it. “I always order the same thing.”

Ben felt the corner of his mouth quirk up in a half smile. “Me too,” he said.

“Blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon, a bowl of fruit, and endless coffee,” she said, grinning.

“Buttermilk pancakes with a side of bacon, a bowl of fruit, and endless coffee.”

“We almost match,” she said, but then she turned red as they both considered her words. _Right. The universe thinks we’re destined to be together. What a load of bullshit._

They ordered their food and sat around in awkward silence as they struggled to figure out what to say. “So you’re from England?” Ben finally said, hoping it was a neutral enough topic for them to safely discuss.

“Yeah,” she said. “I moved here after uni.”

“I bet your family misses you.” _Why did I say that?_ Talking about family was definitely going to hurt him more than it would hurt her, and he was not ready to discuss his numerous issues with his parents, ‘soulmate’ or not.

Something like pain flashed across her face before she said “They’re not in the picture” in a tone that indicated that she didn’t want to discuss it.

That was surprising and, if he was being honest, oddly comforting. “Mine aren’t, either,” he said. In Ben’s experience, normal people loved talking about their families. And normal people from normal families didn’t understand why Ben avoided his. Not that he wanted to discuss it with her, but if he did, at least he wouldn’t have to listen to rounds of “but your parents raised you! How can you possibly think that they failed you?” as if providing a kid with a place to live and food to eat wasn’t the only thing that parents were supposed to do for their kids.

Something in her expression softened, but she didn’t pursue the topic. Good. He wasn’t in the mood to play ‘who had shittier absentee parents’ today. “So you’re a manager?” she said instead.

“Attorney, actually,” he said. “I just manage the legal department at First Order Properties. It’s a good place to work. It pays well, and…” He trailed off when he saw the expression on her face. _Oh. Right. She knows Finn._ “I assume from your expression that our mutual friend Finn has told you otherwise.”

“No, he’s told me that the pay is good,” she said as she cut a pancake up. “But he’s never said that it’s a good place to work. It probably doesn’t help that he’s in a bit of a tough spot with his current project.”

“I had no voice in the decision to create this ‘project’ or in the decision to pull him in,” Ben said. “It was just random luck." 

“Random luck, or fate?”

“I don’t believe in fate.” The words came out harsher than he intended them to.

Rey raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t say anything. “What made you decide to work there?” she said instead.

“After my first year of law school, I realized that I was lost. I was...dealing with a lot of things, and that’s when Billy Snoke offered me an internship at First Order Properties. He gave me a job and a place and guidance when I needed it, and I’ve been there ever since.” It was a comfortingly familiar story, even though he was starting to have doubts as to whether or not it had been a good choice to accept Snoke’s offer in the first place. “What about you?” If he wanted to convince her to jump ship for First Order, he’d have to know why she joined up with Concrete Resistance in the first place.

“I always liked programming, even when I was a kid. I didn’t have access to good computers where I grew up, so I sometimes needed to do a little extra work to get the computer to do what I needed it to do. And then I got a scholarship to study computer engineering at uni, and then when I graduated, I came out here. Concrete Resistance was looking for a programmer, so I interviewed, loved what I heard about the company, and the rest is history, as they say.”

“What is it about Concrete Resistance that appeals to you so much?”

“I love their—our—mission statement. Having green spaces in cities is _so_ important, and I’ve always thought it was a waste to let potential gardening space go to waste, especially when it can be used to grow food. Plus, we want to help connect people to others in their community, especially so that kids can have a safe, healthy place to hang out. I…” She looked as if she was debating finishing the sentence. “I wasn’t always safe at home when I was growing up, and if I have the power to help give kids a safe place to go, even just for a few hours every afternoon, then I want to. I _need_ to.”

That was...Ben couldn’t figure out how to argue with that. _Shit._ Not only was she (very obviously) passionate about the topic, but he knew exactly what she meant. He hadn’t always felt comfortable at home, either.

He didn’t like how much they had in common. It was too _neat_.

“You know,” she said casually, looking down at her mostly-empty plate. “If you’re interested, we could use the endorsement of a powerful attorney, especially one who knows so much about property law.”

Wait. That was _not_ how Ben had envisioned this conversation going. If anyone was going to be asking anyone for anything, it was going to be Ben asking Rey to come work for— _with_ —him at First Order Properties.

Shit, she couldn’t even make eye contact when she asked _him_ to endorse _her_. _Is that the only reason she called me?_ he wondered. Never mind that it was completely hypocritical of him to be pissed off about that when he was doing the same thing. But the sudden realization that she maybe just wanted to use him for his connections hurt more than he had thought it would. _Right. Time to take control of this conversation._ “And First Order Properties could use a talented programmer such as yourself,” he said. 

She looked up. “Are you serious?” she said. “Are you asking me to abandon the job I just told you how much I loved to work at a company that’s trying to research ways to destroy us?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that the only reason you asked me to lunch?” she asked in a low tone.

“Was the only reason you called me to ask if I’d endorse your company?” he shot back. _Oh no._ He could feel the start of an angry panic attack like an engine revving in his brain. It had been brewing all day—no, wait, it had been brewing ever since that day in the coffee shop last week. His therapist kept telling him that all panic attacks were dangerous, but angry panic attacks gave him so much _fuel._ “Because if so, pot, kettle, black.”

“Forgive me for thinking that _maybe_ if someone sat down with you and _explained_ what Concrete Resistance is all about, you’d have a change of heart,” she spat. “How can you _possibly_ have a problem with what we’re doing? We’re not even a _competitor_ for your fucking company. Why are you so set on bringing us down?”

I’m _not. My fucking boss is._ Ben didn’t want to tell her that. “First Order Properties is worth billions of dollars,” he said. “We have offices all around the world. We can pay double—triple—what you’re making now. You can’t possibly want to turn that down. Think of all the fancy computer equipment you could buy with that kind of money.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed. _That’s not good._ An expression like that was the equivalent of the moment before you opened a soda bottle that had been dropped on the floor. 

Ben would know. He wore it all the time.

“You are _un-fucking-believable_ ,” she hissed as she stood up and dropped a $20 bill on the table. “This was a huge mistake. Finn was right. You _don’t_ deserve a chance.”

Oh, fuck _._ That _hurt._ She didn’t even look back as she stormed out of the restaurant. Ben sat shell-shocked for all of thirty seconds before he was running out the door after her to yell “I stand by what I said, you _are_ a stupid hippie bitch!” after her. She responded by flipping him off as she rushed away down the sidewalk.

_Well. That didn’t go according to plan._

_So, now what?_

 

* * *

 

“I take it lunch didn’t go well,” Rose said when Rey stormed back into the office.

“What gave it away?” Rey snapped. “Finn warned me. He _knew_ it was a bad idea, but then he was all ‘soulmate stuff is complicated!’ and ‘Poe wants you to convince him to back us!’ so I said sure, why not give this guy a chance, and then he tried to fucking _poach_ me to go work for _him_!” She flopped down in her seat and groaned. “I don’t mean to yell at you,” she said to Rose. “He’s just so fucking _frustrating._ I don’t know how Finn handles working with him.”

“Finn’s looking for a new job, that’s how,” Rose said. “Do you want some tea? You look like you could use some tea. It’ll make you feel better." 

_I could probably use something a little stronger than tea._ “Sure,” she said. “Tea sounds good. Why are you being so nice to me?” she added as Rose walked away.

Okay, so it wasn’t like Rey hadn’t had a small ulterior motive in calling Ben. She really _had_ thought that there was a chance that he could be reasoned with, especially after Finn’s comment about him being miserable at work. And yes, it was a little hypocritical to be angry at him for only offering to buy her lunch so that he could try to convince her to leave Concrete Resistance just to make it easier for First Order Properties to bring the company down. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t pissed off as _hell_ about it. 

And like. He didn’t even _want_ to get to know her. He just saw her as someone who could get him what he wanted without a care about anything or anyone else. Which fit with Rey’s experience of “everyone who should play an important role in my life abandons me.” And oh _stars_ did that hurt, even when she was expecting it.

“I’m being nice to you because you’re my friend and you’re having a bad day and I’m worried about you,” Rose said a couple of minutes later when she returned with two mugs of tea. “Poe probably shouldn’t have put you up to that.”

“No, it’s fine,” Rey muttered as she wrapped her hands around the mug. “We were going to have to talk sooner or later. At least this way I can get some closure.” 

“Closure?” 

“It’s not like either of us wants this to go anywhere,” Rey explained in between sips of tea. (Rose was right; it _did_ make her feel a little better.) “But at least we met and had a proper conversation before we argued again. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to not argue.” Some part of Rey suspected that they argued because they were very similar people, but she refused to investigate that theory any further.

It _was_ weird that he also came from a fucked-up family, right? It had been a relief when he hadn’t pushed the issue, though. She hadn’t exactly been in the mood to spill out all of her trauma, even if she was spilling to someone who had also been abandoned by his parents. Some part of her brain that felt the need to wrap everything in humor in order to cope said _Maybe you could compare notes on the American versus British foster care systems._

But no. They would never, _ever_ have that conversation. Even if it _was_ possible that he actually understood what growing up like that was like in a way that no one else in her life did.

“I don’t think that’s what closure is,” Rose said, putting her tea down on Rey’s desk. “You don’t sound like you’re over it.”

“I’m still pissed as all hell that he thought that I would just leave this job simply because he asked, but I am definitely over _him._ ”

“It’s shitty that he tried to poach you like that, I’ll give you that,” Rose said. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something else, then changed her mind. Rey was too busy stewing over the situation to give much notice to it. 

Rose let her stew for a few more minutes before she said, “So there’s another project for you.”

Work would be a _very_ welcome distraction. “New project?” she asked.

“Poe said he’d email you some of the details, but he wants you to do some research on laws and regulations regarding use of community green spaces so that we can put some educational information in the app.”

_Laws and regulations. Legal research. Lawyers. Ben’s a lawyer. For_ fuck’s _sake, Poe._ “Why do I have to do it?” she said. “I’m a programmer, not a lawyer.”

“The rest of us are busy with other projects, and since you’re coding the app, you may as well help with content development,” Rose said. “Besides, you said that you were mostly finished up with the location detector stuff, right?”

“This has nothing to do with the fact that my douchebag ‘soulmate’ is a lawyer and Poe won’t let this thing go, does it?”

Rose held up her hands in mock ‘don’t shoot the messenger.’ “I didn’t ask,” she said. “I just said I’d pass the message along once you got back from lunch. You can go argue with Poe about it if you want. I won’t stop you.”

Rey was still too pissed off at Poe about pushing the ‘convince Ben Solo to back us!’ thing to have a rational conversation with him. “No, it’s fine,” she grumbled, opening her laptop back up. “I’ll just do it myself.”

 

* * *

 

Ben stormed back to the office, still fuming about lunch with Rey. He gave his best death glare to everyone he passed on his way to the floor where Phasma’s techs worked, then stuck his head in and barked for Finn to meet him in his office in five minutes before stomping up to his office and slamming the door behind him.

“What the _fuck_ have you been telling Rey about this company?” Ben growled as soon as Finn entered the office. “I just tried to offer her a job and she basically told me to fuck off. Again.”

Finn looked less nervous than he should have been, which was not a good sign. “I don’t know why you’ve gotten it into your head that Rey and I are friends, but I’ve barely even talked to her, let alone told her about my job.”

“You’re close enough to give her my card and tell her to call me. Isn’t that how friends work?” He realized how that sounded half a second after the words left his mouth.

“No, dude. That’s not how friends work.” Ben was about to snap at him for calling him ‘dude’ (who _said_ that anymore?), but Finn wasn’t done speaking. “Let me guess. You went in expecting her to fall at your feet over a job offer when she’s already very happy with the job she has?” Ben’s silent fuming was apparently answer enough. “Do _you_ even like working here?” Finn asked quietly.

Ben stilled. Hadn’t he been asking himself the same question lately? His boss was the biggest jackass in history, he never had any free time, he was wasting his time on stupid assignments like this Concrete Resistance thing, and he didn’t have any friends. Just a couple of coworkers who he sometimes went out drinking with.

“I’m not suggesting you quit your job right this second, or anything,” Finn said. “But to be completely honest, you’re completely miserable, and I don’t think you actually want Rey working here.” 

“You know you’re on really, _really_ dangerous ground right now, don’t you?” Ben growled.

It wasn’t like Finn was _wrong._ Ben just didn’t have the guts to admit to any of it. 

Finn shrugged. “If you were going to fire me, you’d have done it the second I told you I wasn’t going to help you bring down my soulmates’ company.”

_Okay. That’s fair._ “Why are you still even _here_?” Ben asked. 

“You told me to come to your office.”

“No, why are you still working here?”

“Oh. Student loans, to be honest. And...because I feel a little bad for you. And Rey. You both clearly have some issues that you’re not coping well with.”

Ben didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t even know the last time someone had been so brutally honest with him. And, strangely, that made him respect Finn a little more. “Well...fuck,” he muttered, unsure of how to follow that statement up.

“Also, full disclosure, I am currently looking for a new job.” 

Ben couldn’t hold back a snort. “Well, as long as you’re being honest,” he said.

For the first time in the conversation, Finn looked mildly uncomfortable. “Sorry, that was all probably out-of-line,” he said. “I’ve been told that I need to develop a better filter.”

Ben didn’t know how to respond to that, so he just said, “We still need to find a way to bring that company down.”

Some of the tension in Finn’s shoulders eased a bit as he realized that Ben wasn’t going to bite his head off. “I can’t help you with that,” he said quietly.

Ben knew that he could easily yell at Phasma to assign him a new research assistant to help with this project, but he couldn’t let go of Finn’s connection to the company. There _had_ to be a way to get Finn to cave. Everyone had their selling point. It was just a matter of finding his. “If you’re worried about money, I bet I could get you promoted after we finish this project,” Ben said as casually as he could manage. 

The tension reappeared in Finn’s posture. He looked like he was considering it, but… “No, I’m sorry. I can’t do that to—to the people I know who work there.” 

“Not even for double the salary?” Ben couldn’t actually promise that, but maybe—

“No,” Finn said firmly. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“You have to give me _something,_ ” Ben said. He could only distract Snoke with updates about his other projects for so long before his boss started asking questions about why Ben wasn’t getting anything done on this one. 

Finn sighed. “I don’t know, why don’t you download their app and check it out yourself?” It sounded like something he didn’t expect Ben to actually do, and if he hadn’t been so desperate for a good update for Snoke, Ben would have blown it off.

Except… “Rey developed it, didn’t she?”

Finn nodded. “She wasn’t the only one who designed it, but she did all of the coding. She’s smart. Too smart for First Order.”

“I thought you said you didn’t really know her?” Ben said as he pulled out his phone to download the Concrete Resistance app.

He raised an eyebrow. “Who says I have to know her in order to know that she’s too smart to work here?”

By the time Ben finished downloading the app, Finn had already left. _Shit. Why did I let him get in the last word?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: do you think that different cultures have different beliefs/practices around soulmarks? If so, what do you think some of those might be?


	6. So much for “running away from your problems”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Finn are not as subtle as they think they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you all so much for your support! <3

It was like now that Rey and Ben had crossed paths against their will and then decided that they never wanted to cross paths again, the universe wanted to torture them by putting them in the same places at the same times. Every time she spotted Ben on the street or in another coffee shop (or even, once, in the same grocery store), she told herself that she was _not_ going to acknowledge his presence, only to find herself sniping at him yet again. “Don’t you _dare_ ruin another shirt by spilling coffee on me again,” she said upon running into him at a coffee shop in a completely different part of town than Takodana Cafe or Kanata Brews. (“Like I’d waste coffee on you,” he’d said as he ripped the large, hot beverage out of the barista’s hand before storming out of the cafe.)

“You know, you could afford to buy store brand mac and cheese if you accepted my offer to come work at First Order Properties,” he said as they crossed paths at the grocery store. (“I’m surprised to see you shopping outside of Whole Foods, since you’re so snobby about food brands,” she’d spat back.)

“I’m _going_ to bring down Concrete Resistance and you’re _going_ to suffer,” he threatened while they were waiting for the light to turn at the same crosswalk one day. (“Eat me,” she’d snapped. It was only after she saw how red his face got that she realized what a poor choice of words that was.)

Rose seemed to find it amusing, which just pissed Rey off even more. “I heard you and Ben Solo got into it at Bookworm’s Coffee yesterday,” she said to Rey one morning, barely concealing the smirk on her face.

“How’d you heard about _that_?” Rey asked. She hadn’t even known that Bookworm’s Cafe existed until two days ago. (She was quickly running out of coffee shops to try. Evidently, Ben had the same idea that she did, and more often than not, they ended up in the same place, because _of fucking course_ they did.) She and Ben had gotten kicked out after they started arguing loudly about community outreach programs. Surprisingly, he was in favor of providing a safe place for kids to hang out after school. He just thought that it should be someplace like a corporation-run tutoring center and not outside on a playground. The fact that he somehow managed to agree while also disagreeing completely made Rey’s head spin.

“Finn told me,” Rose said. 

“Finn _still_ works with him?” Rey asked, baffled. “How the fuck has he not been fired or quit yet?”

Rose couldn’t hide her smirk anymore. “He thinks that Solo still thinks he can convince Finn to give up information about us.” There was something else that she wasn’t saying to Rey, and despite how much she told herself (and anyone who would listen) that she didn’t want anything to do with Ben Solo, she couldn’t help but try to prod Rose for more information. “Finn thinks—and I agree—that Ben Solo needs a friend who hasn’t bought into First Order’s propaganda.” She gave Rey a _look_ that Rey interpreted to mean that Rose wanted her to ask more questions about it.

“I’m not surprised that he doesn’t have any friends,” Rey muttered.

“You know,” Rose said in an suddenly-all-too-casual tone, “Finn says he talks about you a lot. Well, complains about you, really.”

Rey _really_ didn’t want to know that. It made her feel a confusing array of things that she didn’t have a name for. She’d always been really good at compartmentalizing. Too good, actually. The fact that Ben Solo was a walking contradiction of “things Rey could almost relate to,” “things Rey couldn’t stand,” and “still the hottest person Rey had ever met” was something that she couldn’t compartmentalize. Her conversations with her therapist had started to turn into “listen to the latest interaction I had with Ben Solo” while her therapist tried to get her to analyze exactly _why_ he had this effect on her other than, “I don’t know, some soulmate bullshit that neither of us buys into.” 

“He’s just mad that I won’t accept his ‘generous’ job offer so that his company can take us down,” Rey grumbled. “Like I’d leave now. Not while we’re so close to the launch date.” Everyone’s workload had intensified as they counted down the days until they officially went live. Feedback and technical problem reports were rolling in with the beta version of the Concrete Resistance apps, and Kaydel had started involving Rey with some of the customer service enquiries that involved tech support. The “legal research” project that Poe had asked her to do had fallen to the side, and as Rey was in no rush to pick it back up, she was making it very clear that she was _very_ busy with software bugs and didn’t have time for any other projects.

“And you’re not mad that he won’t publicly endorse us?” Rose said.

“I just don’t get it,” Rey said. “What is so bad about what we’re doing? It’s not like we’re trying to knock First Order Properties down to build a garden there instead.” 

“Why don’t you ask him?” Rose said.

Rey narrowed her eyes. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you _want_ us to get together,” she said.

Rose’s eyes widened in mock innocence. “Who, me? I would _never._ I’m just saying, for two people who are so determined to prove that you mean _nothing_ to each other, neither of you two is even _trying_ to let this go.” 

“I am _too_ trying to let this go,” Rey said with more conviction than she actually felt. Rose had a point. It seemed to be yet another thing she and Ben had in common: they were both too stubborn to let something go, even when the ‘something’ was how much they wanted to avoid admitting that they had a connection, even when it was written onto their skin. (Rey didn’t _quite_ agree with Ben’s opinion that fate was bullshit, but she sure as hell didn’t have to buy into _this_ aspect of fate.) 

“You are _not,_ ” Rose said. “I bet you can’t have one single interaction where you don’t start yelling at each other and then coming and complaining to me about it afterwards.”

“I bet I can prove you wrong,” Rey said. “Watch. The next time I see him, I won’t argue at all, just to prove that I can.”

Rose snorted. “Yeah, because that’s not petty _at all_.”

 

* * *

 

When Ben saw Rey walk into the coffee shop he was sitting in ( _How in the fuck do we keep managing to end up in the same coffee shop at the same time?_ ), he braced himself for another fight as he watched her order coffee. Evidently, she hadn’t spotted him yet, otherwise she would have already been yelling at him about gardens or playgrounds or _whatever._

_Or maybe not,_ Ben thought as she took her coffee (cold brew, as usual; her company bio hadn’t been kidding when it said ‘cold brew coffee addict’—not that he’d been paying attention, though) and made her way to the table he was sitting at. She pulled out the chair and sat down without a word. He watched her in silence, not sure what to make of this new development.

“Why?” she finally asked. 

“Excuse me?” 

“Why should I leave Concrete Resistance and go work for First Order Properties?” she asked.

_Is she actually considering—?_ “I told you, we can offer much higher pay than a little start-up like Concrete Resistance can,” he said.

“I’m not interested in that,” she said. “Why are you so desperate to get me to go work for you if all you’re trying to do is destroy my company?”

Ben frowned. What was he supposed to tell her? He didn’t think that she’d take kindly to the words Snoke had used. (And anyway, the memory of Snoke saying _women don’t belong in tech_ still made him a little nauseous.) “You’re too talented to waste your time with a little startup that will inevitably fail within three years. You know the statistics on startups succeeding, right? Why not jump ship and come to a big, well-established company instead?”

“Since when do you care about my career?” she asked.

“I don’t,” he said quickly. “But I’ve seen your work. I downloaded the app. Finn told me that you built the entire thing yourself. There aren’t many programmers who can say they’ve done that.” That last part was a stretch, but if he appealed to her ego, maybe she wouldn’t question that statement.

“Bullshit,” she said. “You don’t know the first thing about programming.”

He probably shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d called him on it. “Maybe not, but I can still recognize talent when I see it.”

She narrowed her eyes slightly as she met his. “That’s not it,” she said. “There’s something else. Why are _you_ , the head of legal management for a multibillion-dollar company, so interested in _me_ , a little developer working at a little startup?”

He narrowed his eyes back at her. Some alarm somewhere in the back of his brain went off at the odd intimacy of silently glaring at each other. It was weird to have a moment where they weren’t arguing loudly. “What do you care?” he finally said, not breaking the stare.

“I’d like to know why the guy I can’t seem to avoid who _knows_ how much I hate him is so desperate for me to go work for him.”

There was an implication there that Ben didn’t like. “Your company has caught my boss’s eye,” he said, figuring that telling her half of the truth would have to be enough. “He’s—we’re—always in search of talented employees.”

“And this has nothing to do with—you know,” she said, finally looking away.

Despite the fact that he didn’t want to say it aloud, either, he found himself judging her for being afraid to acknowledge the _thing_ between them. “No,” he said quietly. “He has no idea. Nobody does, aside from Finn, and he got _that_ from your mutual friend. I’d rather not make our... _connection_ public knowledge.” 

He noted with some surprise that her expression softened a little bit. “Yeah, me either,” she muttered. Louder, she added, “I still don’t want to work for you. My answer isn’t going to change. I love my job and my company and yeah, maybe it doesn’t pay as well as working at a large corporation, but you know what? I don’t care. Some of us care about more than just money.”

“Money isn’t the only thing I care about,” Ben said.

“No?” said Rey, raising an eyebrow. “Because it sounds like your main argument for getting me to go work for you is about money. Do you even _like_ your job, Ben Solo?”

“I—of course I do,” he said, even though the words felt hollow. He loved his job. He loved the challenge of the work, and the pay, and the fact that he got to travel around the world to manage (okay, fine, _yell at_ ) First Order Properties employees everywhere. Right? “Why would you ask that?”

“Well, you know how they say that misery loves company,” she said as she took a sip of her coffee. (He was definitely _not_ watching her lips, because that would be creepy. But _damn_ , how did she manage to make a fucking _straw_ look sexy?)

“Why would I hire you just to make myself more miserable?” he said.

“So you admit that you’re miserable?”

_What?_ “Look, I don’t know what kind of head games you’re trying to play today, but I don’t have time for them.” Which wasn’t a lie; he’d actually gone to the coffee shop to get work done somewhere where Hux couldn’t bother him before taking off for a trip to the First Order Properties office in London for the rest of the week. “If you’re not here to accept my _generous_ job offer or give me information I can use to bring your company down, get the fuck out of my face,” he snapped, unable to bring himself to meet her eyes.

After a moment, she muttered, “Well, fine, and fuck you, too,” before standing up and walking away from the table, leaving behind a confused, miserable Ben.

It was technically the most civil exchange they’d ever had. Hell, even their not-date had involved more yelling. So why did it leave him with a strange sense of discomfort and melancholy? A civil conversation was progress. She’d start to listen to him soon, now that they had had a conversation with no yelling. It was a good thing, then, this conversation.

So why did Ben feel so _lost_ watching Rey walk away?

 

* * *

 

Rey managed to avoid Ben for a whole five days after the weirdly civil conversation in the coffee shop. And even though she’d won her bet with Rose that she could have a conversation with him without any yelling, she still didn’t feel right about the whole thing. Something about it had left a bad taste in her mouth.

Maybe it was knowing that he was miserable at work. And not that she really _cared_ about him or his happiness, but there was something sad about watching someone who refused to admit how miserable they were at work, especially when she worked in a job that she loved in comparison. (Not that her job was perfect; even at a good job, everyone had bad days. Example: the day she and Ben Solo had crossed paths for the first time.)

“It’s weird that he’s miserable and yet keeps trying to get me to come work for him, right?” Rey said to Rose and Finn over a pint of beer on Saturday. She’d been a little surprise to receive Rose’s _come out and meet us for drinks_ text, followed by the name and address of a bar she’d never been to, but Rey was in no mood to turn down drinks.

“He’s a weird guy,” said Finn. “I don’t think he understands that he’s unhappy at work. He just buries himself in more work. I think yelling at other attorneys is how he blows off steam.”

“How do you not understand that you’re unhappy about something?” Rey said. “It’s a difficult emotion to miss.” 

“Is it?” said Finn. Rose’s head turned to give him a sharp look. “It’s the ‘frog in boiling water’ metaphor, isn’t it? When something gradually gets worse and worse, you don’t realize how bad it is until you’re boiling alive.” 

Rey grimaced. Finn had a point. She’d been out of foster care for six years and she was still untangling the trauma she’d been carrying for so long. She hadn’t realized how bad things were until she’d gotten out and realized that it was possible for life to be better, and even then, every once in a while someone made a random, harmless comment in conversation that made her realize just how not normal her childhood had been. “I guess,” she muttered. She finished her beer and got up to order another, needing a moment to think. She still couldn’t quite put her finger on what was bothering her so much. Maybe another beer would help.

She returned to the table that she, Rose, and Finn had claimed just in time for Rose to say “I love this song!” and pull her onto the dance floor. “Finn can keep an eye on the drinks,” she said as she dropped Rey’s hand and started to dance. 

Rey couldn’t keep from laughing at Rose’s attempts to get her to dance, but after the band started up the next song, she started to move. “I feel like an idiot,” she said to Rose over the music. “I don’t know how to dance.”

“Liar,” Rose said with a grin. “You’re doing it right now.”

“You know, sometimes you kinda piss me off when you won’t drop the ‘Ben Solo is your soulmate and you should do something about it’ thing, but you always know how to make me feel better,” Rey confessed.

Rose laughed. “That’s because you _should_ do something about it,” she said. “And good, I’m glad I can bring balance to this friendship.”

“I don’t _want_ to do something about it,” Rey said. “I know he’s super hot, but I just want him to disappear and not be in my life.”

“You’re not even a little bit curious?” Rose said. “Soulmate sex is, by definition, the best sex. Trust me. I have three.”

“Please don’t give me details. I have to work with you guys,” Rey said. “Besides, even if I _was_ a little curious, which I’m _not_ , we hate each other. It would never work out.”

“You never know until you try,” Rose said, grinning.

“The only time we had a conversation and didn’t yell at each other was just...weird,” Rey said.

“I know,” said Rose. “You’ve said. Multiple times.”

“I don’t know _why_ it was so weird, though!”

Rose didn’t respond; the pace and volume of the music had picked up, and Rey was happy to let it drop in favor of dancing with her best friend. It wasn’t until the lead singer said something about taking a break that she realized she was sweating. “I need a break,” she said to Rose as the crowd on the dance floor started to disperse in favor of getting more drinks. She didn’t know how to interpret the look that flashed across Rose’s face as they made their way back to the table until she spotted Finn talking to a very tall, very familiar, very _unwelcome_ figure.

“Rey!” Finn said in a too-big smile. “Look who I ran into!”

Ben gave Finn a look. “Ran into? But you—”

“What a weird coincidence,” Finn said, cutting Ben off.

Rey narrowed her eyes at Finn, ignoring Ben. After spending five days wondering— _obsessing; just admit it to yourself already_ —why the conversation in the coffee shop had been so weird, it was jarring to see him. And now that Rose had put the idea about how good soulmate sex was in her head… “Where’s my beer?” she said. _I need a fucking drink._

Finn pushed the full glass towards her, and handed Rose a cocktail. “Thanks, Finn,” she said, reaching up to kiss his cheek. Rey downed half of her beer without even acknowledging Ben. She was happy to keep ignoring him until Rose stepped back from Finn and said, “Hi, I’m Rose,” to him.

“Ben,” he said, shaking her hand.

“Solo?” she said. “I’ve heard _so much_ about you.” Rey nearly choked on her beer at Rose’s tone of voice.

“All wonderful things, I’m sure,” Ben deadpanned.

Rose laughed. “There’s no way to answer that that won’t get me in trouble,” she said. Rey glared at her, but Rose ignored her. 

Ben didn’t seem to know what to say to that, and the four of them stood around the table in silence, Rey praying that the band came back for another set soon. For once, things worked out in her favor, because the band came back on stage a couple of minutes later. “Let’s dance,” Rey said, putting her mostly-empty glass on the table and grabbing Rose’s hand.

“Tell me you’re not curious,” Rose said as soon as they were in the middle of the dance floor. “I’ve never seen two people try so hard to pretend that they don’t want to eyefuck each other.”

“What did you say? I can’t hear you,” Rey lied. “The music is too loud.” Rose gave her a skeptical look, but she didn’t say anything else.

Rey had never been a huge fan of dancing, but it beat the hell out of hanging around in awkward silence with Ben Solo. Besides, Rose’s happiness was infectious, and as the beer she’d downed hit her, Rey realized that maybe she liked dancing more than she’d thought. 

To her surprise, Ben was still at the table when she and Rose made their way back to the table after the band finished their last set. “Finn said he’d be right back,” he said. “He got a phone call from someone named Poe.” 

“Oh, I should probably go check on him,” Rose said, flashing Rey a look.

Rey watched her retreat, then picked up her beer. “They’re not subtle,” she said.

Ben let out an awkward laugh. “You think?” 

Neither of them knew what to say. Rey wasn’t surprised when Rose reappeared a couple of minutes later and said, “Finn and I have to go. Poe and Kaydel got locked out. Nice to meet you, Ben!” Rey barely had time to register Rose’s words before she was hugging her and telling her to get home safe.

“Poe and Kaydel?” Ben said.

Rey had no idea how much of their relationship Finn had disclosed to Ben. “Their roommates,” she said.

“They share an apartment with another couple?” he asked. 

“Not exactly,” Rey said. “It’s a soulmate thing.”

“Wait. I thought that Finn and Rose—?”

“They are,” Rey said. “But Poe and Kaydel are also a part of their relationship.”

“Huh,” Ben said. Upon seeing Rey’s questioning expression, he added, “There have been a few comments from Finn that didn’t click until just now. But honestly? I’ve always thought that the whole soulmate thing is bullshit,” Ben said.

Rey snorted. “What, you thought that it was all some great cosmic scam?” she said.

“How can the universe guarantee that there’s someone out there who’s perfect for you?” he said.

“Multiple someones, for some people,” Rey said. “Doesn’t it freak you out that something out there knew what our first words to each other were going to be? It’s not like they were ambiguous.” She reached her hand up to touch her right collarbone without even thinking about it. _This is a dangerous conversation to be having,_ she realized. She didn’t really _want_ to be with Ben. Sure, he was hot. And sure, there was this _soulmate_ thing between them. But other than that, she couldn’t stand the man. She hated who he worked for and what that company stood for, and she knew the feeling was mutual.

“I don’t think it means anything,” he said. “I’m an asshole. I insult a lot of people. And it’s not like you’re the most wholesome person in the universe.”

“I should probably be offended, but I know I’ve got my faults,” Rey said. “I see a therapist. I’m working on them.”

“So am I.”

“I’ll drink to having a good therapist,” she said, holding up the last of her glass of beer. Wait. Were she and Ben becoming drinking buddies? “But seriously. This means _nothing_ to you?” she couldn’t keep herself from asking.

“I think it’s so bullshit that even if you kissed me, I’d feel nothing.” There was an almost imperceptible tremor to his voice, and she smirked.

“Want to bet on that?” she said, putting her now-empty glass down on the table. This was a terrible idea. She _knew_ it was a terrible idea. But she was just tipsy enough for her impulse control to take a backseat to her sex drive and her curiosity about what it would be like to finally kiss her so-called soulmate. “Because I bet that you are far more affected by this than you admit.”

“I’ll take that bet, because I think that _you_ are the one who is affected by this. Loser has to find a new coffee shop,” Ben said, putting his empty glass down next to hers. “I want Kanata Brews back.”

So he _had_ noticed the coffee shop connection. Rey smirked. “You’re on,” she said before she placed a hand on either cheek to pull his lips down to meet hers.

It was like nothing that Rey had ever experienced before and she realized suddenly that it was the first time they’d touched, if you didn’t count the time he’d brushed her in the park before they’d hurled insults to each other for the first time. She felt shocks of electricity where her fingers rested on his cheeks, and there was an energy in the kiss unlike anything she’d ever felt. He somehow tasted like craft beer and comfort and _home_ , if that was even a possible way to taste. The best—and worst—part was that it felt overwhelmingly, terrifyingly _right_ in a way that nothing in Rey’s life had ever felt.

Kissing Ben made Rey feel things that she didn’t have names for, things she didn’t even know were possible to feel. And when she pulled back so that they could catch their breath, she saw the same thing reflected in Ben’s eyes. “Don’t be afraid,” she found herself saying before he could pull away. “I feel it, too.” _Feel what?_ she asked herself. _What are you even_ saying _right now? Isn’t the whole point of this to pretend that you aren’t affected by it?_

For a split second, she thought he was going to run off and abandon her ( _just like everyone else,_ a part of her brain whispered). But then he leaned in and murmured in her ear, “You know what? One kiss isn’t enough for me to really know whether or not this is bullshit.”

Rey smirked. She’d won, even if he wouldn’t admit it yet. “Your place or mine?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s Kylo’s line. Just go with it.
> 
> Today’s AU worldbuilding question: How quickly do you think people rush into serious relationships with their soulmate? ‘Married in Las Vegas after knowing each other for two hours’ quickly or ‘only getting married after fifteen years together, buying a house, and having kids’ quickly? Does marriage even matter in a soulmates AU?


	7. So much for “there’s nothing between us”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey find out if “soulmate hatesex” is a thing. Spoiler alert: oh, is it _ever_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for your kudos and comments! You guys had really great responses to that last question. I'm amazed at how many of you said that you (or people you knew) were sure about a relationship pretty early on!
> 
> As for today's update...let's earn that E-rating, shall we? (And if smut isn't your thing, skip to the endnotes.)

Ben figured that the spark between him and Rey was just a normal hatesex spark. Not that he had a ton of experience in that arena—the closest he’d ever gotten was that one Halloween that he and Hux accidentally made out while drunk, and they didn’t even feel strongly enough about each other to actually hate each other, anyway—but there was no way that what he felt with Rey, like, _meant_ something, did it?

Except that it did, because why else was he inviting her back to his place? He didn’t do hookups or casual sex. He didn’t have time for that shit. But even before they’d spoken to each other, there had been this undeniable attraction between them. She felt it too, he knew. She’d said so. And it wasn’t just an alcohol thing. They were both too sober to blame it on being drunk. But stars, she’d looked so good dancing, and then he’d made the mistake of daring her to kiss him, and now here they were, in an Uber on their way back to his apartment for what they had both agreed was _definitely_ a one-night stand, bullshit ‘soulmate’ connection be damned.

This was _not_ how Ben had thought his evening was going to go when he’d received Finn’s _if you’re back from London, you should meet me and my friends for a drink downtown_ text. If Ben hadn’t been so jetlagged, he probably would have questioned the motives of that text more closely instead of thinking, _Sure, why not, it’ll force me to stay awake to get over the jetlag._

The Uber ride was excruciating. Out of all of the drivers out that Saturday, they had to get the one judgmental Bible-thumper of the bunch. All of the cartoonish angels and the soft Christian rock music made him uncomfortable, like the driver _knew_ they were about to go have maybe-soulmate-hatesex and was judging the shit out of them for it. So Ben and Rey were communicating in facial expressions and glances, if you could consider blatant eyefucking a ‘glance.’ At one point she held out her hand to him, but awkwardly, like she was afraid that he was going to bat it away. He was afraid of what he would feel when he touched it—after all, what if the sparks they’d felt when they kissed were just, like, a weird trick of the light or something?—but as soon as his fingertips brushed hers, he knew that it wasn’t a mistake. Whatever they had, whatever they were about to go do, it all meant _something_.

However, Ben would be damned before he admitted that he was wrong about anything, especially _this_.

And again: they’d both agreed that it was just a one-time thing. Just to get it out of their systems. That was all.

The Uber pulled up to Ben’s apartment building, and he and Rey couldn’t leave the creepy judgmental cartoon angels quickly enough. “You live _here_?” she breathed as they walked past the doorman.

He gave her a smug smile. “Still think it’s better working at a startup?”

She gave him a look. “Can we not do this right now?”

That was fair. Ben was more than happy to ignore work and the number of complications that this was about to create.

As soon as they were inside the apartment and he was closing the front door, Rey was on him. “Still think this is bullshit, Solo?” she said. She was standing so close that he could feel the words as easily as he could hear them. 

“I don’t know,” he breathed. “Let’s find out.” He was expecting (hoping) she would pull him down for another searing kiss like they’d shared at the bar, but she wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. She placed a kiss at the hollow of his neck, another where his jaw met his neck, and then she gave his earlobe a quick nip before trailing kisses along his jaw and then finally meeting his lips. Ben had never been so turned on by just a bit of kissing before.

Holy _shit._ If this was what kissing Rey was like…

This woman was going to kill him. And he was going to fucking die happy.

He couldn’t let her keep teasing him. Ben had to take back control of the situation. He shifted his hips and before she could react, he flipped them around so that she was pinned up against the door. She wrapped her legs around his waist automatically, and even though he now had her hands pinned on either side of her head, all she had to do was roll her hips to remind him that she was still in control ( _Stars, that feels so good, do it again—)_.

He couldn’t let her get away with this. He wanted—no, _needed_ —to render her a squirming, breathy, moaning mess. He tore his lips away from hers to nip at the sensitive skin on her neck. She let out a sigh that was nearly a moan and said “Don’t leave a mark” breathlessly as he sucked on the point where her neck met her shoulder. Ben hadn’t been planning on leaving a mark—after all, he was more than willing to pretend that this evening had never happened after it was all over—but he felt a pang of hurt for some reason. So now that she’d said it…

He let one of her hands go so that he could undo the buttons on her blouse, kissing and nipping at her chest until he hit the point right between her breasts. And then he sucked hard, hard enough to make her gasp as her now-freed hand tangled in his hair. “Oh, _fuck_ you,” she said.

He couldn’t hold back a grin as he straightened up to capture her lips with his. “Isn’t that the point of this?” he murmured between kisses.

“If that’s the case, then I am _not_ having sex with you pressed up against your front door like this,” she said, unhooking her legs from his hips so that she could push him away.

“I don’t take orders from you,” he growled as he let her down. Not that he particularly wanted to fuck her against the door—oh, he wanted to take his time with this, if only to prove that she was wrong and he wasn’t affected by the stupid soulmate thing even a little bit—but he’d be damned if he let her think that he was just doing what she wanted him to do. So just to prove who was _really_ in charge, he picked her up and carried her down the hall to his bedroom.

She yelped in surprise as he hooked his arm under her knees to pick her up in a bridal carry, and she retaliated by biting his earlobe. He let out a gasp before he could stop it, which felt like a concession to her. “Sure you don’t,” she purred—fucking _purred_ , who _did_ that?—in his ear. He nearly dropped her on the bed as she fought her way out of his arms. She laughed as she pushed herself up off of the bed and looped her fingers through his belt loops. “Did you seriously just carry me across your fucking _massive_ apartment, just to try to prove a point?” she murmured.

“‘Try’?” he said as he undid the rest of the buttons on her blouse. He slid his fingertips back up over her stomach and chest to push the shirt off of her shoulders. His breath hitched as he saw the words written under her collarbone, and he pulled his fingers away quickly, as if they would burn him. (Was that a thing? He didn’t know. He’d spent so much of his life avoiding any discussion of soulmate things that he was realizing just how much he didn’t know.)

Rey tensed as she realized what he was staring at. “Oh, that,” she murmured. “Ignore them. The whole thing is bullshit, remember?”

_Right. Bullshit._ So why was he so afraid to touch them?

When he didn’t respond, she rolled her eyes and took off her bra, as if he was the type of person who was easily distracted by—

“Holy shit, your tits are _perfect_ ,” he said before he could stop himself, all thoughts of soulmarks gone. Well, mostly gone. He’d just have to avoid putting his hands or mouth anywhere near her right collarbone, and everything would be fine.

“I know, right?” she said. The words would have been more convincing if he didn’t recognize the kind of bravado that she was using, that sort of _fake it till you make it_ attitude that he spent his entire life trying to employ. “Are you just going to stand there? Because if so, I’m gonna go—”

_Fuck, no._ He shut her up with another kiss, enjoying the way she gasped as he cupped her breasts and the way her nippled pebbled under his thumbs. He barely noticed what her hands were doing until he felt her fingernails digging into his hips as she tried to pull him in closer. And _damn,_ did it feel good as she slid the hemline of the shirt he was wearing up, and then over his head, and—

“What the fuck,” she breathed as she took in the sight of his chest and arms.

For a second, he panicked, thinking that she was referring to the scar running down the side of his face and his chest. But her fingers were trailing over his biceps, and then his pecs, and then his abs, and her eyes weren’t even acknowledging the scar, and how did she make such a simple movement feel so damn _good_? “What are you—”

“Shh,” she said, holding two fingers to his lips. “Don’t ruin this for me. I’m trying to pretend that you’re not a total asshole for five seconds. Stars, why do you have to be so _hot_?”

On some level, Ben knew that there was mutual (physical, _only_ physical) attraction. But hearing her actually _say_ it was very different from the silent eyefucking they had been doing earlier.

And hearing her say it was _fucking awesome._

He had never understood the appeal of sticking someone else’s fingers in his mouth until that second. Granted, he was partially doing it to try to piss her off because as much as he appreciated hearing how attractive she found him, he didn’t appreciate being told to shut up. Given the way her lust-blown eyes snapped to his, she was just as surprised as he was by how good the sensation of his tongue and teeth scraping over the pads of her fingers felt. She removed her hand hastily and leaned back a little bit. “I don’t see your marks,” she said, gazing at his collarbone.

“They’re not there,” he said. “They’re right above my left knee.” He didn’t like acknowledging them, but if the evening continued in the direction they were headed, she’d see them anyway.

“Huh,” she said. “I expected them to be in the same place as mine.”

“I never wear shorts if I can help it,” he said.

“I never wear tank tops if I can help it.”

“Good, glad to know we’re both embarrassed by this stupid thing.” _Can we change the subject now?_

Evidently she felt the same way, because the next words out of her mouth were “You _licked_ my fingers.”

“And _you_ liked it.”

“You know there’s a much better use for your tongue, right? And maybe it’ll make you shut the fuck up again.”

“Stars, you’re such a bitch,” he said, but he was already fumbling with the button on her jeans. She pushed his hands away to pull her jeans and underwear off in one smooth movement before stepping out of them. He pushed her back onto the bed and leaned over her to capture her lips with his again. _I’m not the only one who needs to shut the fuck up here,_ he thought.

And okay, he definitely didn’t take orders from her, but he _had_ been thinking about doing this anyway. Not that he’d ever done this before—there was a certain level of intimacy in eating someone out that he hadn’t crossed with his previous partners (okay, fine, the _one_ ex-girlfriend)—but whatever, he’d read porn. And anyway, given how damn _responsive_ she was to everything else he was doing to her, he didn’t think he’d have a problem figuring it out. 

She wrapped her arms around his neck, one hand reaching back to dig her nails into his shoulder, and the other reaching up to tangle in his hair, and oh _stars_ , the slight pain of her fingernails digging into his shoulder and the way she was pulling his hair were sensations he never thought would turn him on but they _did,_ everything did about this woman did.

_Fuck_.

He didn’t want her to know exactly how affected by this he was, but as he shifted so that he was now trailing his lips and tongue down her neck and to her collarbone (the left one, definitely the left one, nowhere near the marks they were pretending didn’t exist), he saw her smirk as if she knew _exactly_ how much he was enjoying this. Which didn’t surprise him, because she was just as stubborn as he was. But it still pissed him off, so he responded by biting her collarbone. She gasped, which was the exact response he was looking for. “Stop teasing, you ass,” she said.

Some idiotic remark along the lines of _You know I can take whatever I want_ was on the tip of his tongue, but it was probably better to just _show_ her that he was in charge instead of saying something stupid. The fact that he just so _happened_ to be doing what she said was more about how badly he wanted to taste her and render her a moaning, writhing wreck than it was about following her orders.

And _oh fuck,_ did he love the way she was moaning and cursing his name by the time he had finally had enough teasing and licked delicately at her lips. “Fuck, I can’t believe how wet you are,” he murmured.

“Why are you still talking when you could be— _fuck,_ ” she said as he licked again, more boldly this time.

Ben didn’t really know what exactly he’d been expecting her to taste like, but _oh,_ he liked it, he liked _this._ And not that he wanted to follow her orders, but he wanted her to feel _good_ , so he found himself adjusting and changing what he was doing as she told him exactly what she wanted.

_Damn_ , he’d never been so turned on by getting someone else off before.

And _holy shit,_ he wanted to be inside of her more than he’d ever wanted anything else, but there was no way he was letting _that_ happen until he’d gotten her off at least once. She barely had to say “I need more” before he was sliding a finger inside of her, quickly followed by another as she begged for it. If his mouth hadn’t been so busy (and like he was going to do anything that would stop her from making the noises she was making), he would have said _I can’t believe how good you feel and I can’t wait until I’m buried deep inside of you_. It barely felt like any time had passed before she was gripping his hair to hold his head in place while she shifted her hips, her muscles clenching around his fingers as she came.

He didn’t let up until she was pushing him away, breathing hard. And when he stood up and met her eyes, he made a point of licking her off of his fingers. _Okay, yeah, I definitely get the ‘fingers-in-the-mouth’ thing now._  

It took Rey all of two seconds before she was launching herself at him, ready for more. “I hate you for being so good at that, you know,” she said between sharp, hot, desperate kisses.

“So you admit that you’re more affected by this than I am?”

“No way,” she said as her hands flew to his belt, scrambling to undo the buckle on it. “You loved that. You’re going to think back on that and make yourself come thinking about it tomorrow, aren’t you?” 

“Fuck you,” he said instead of admitting that she was right. That was _definitely_ a memory that was going to stick with him, as much as he hated to admit it. “Like you won’t.”

She was halfway to pulling his jeans off when something important occurred to him. “Wait, hold on,” he said, grabbing her wrists.

She glared at him. “What?” she said, annoyed at being interrupted.

“I don’t have any condoms. I wasn’t planning on this happening tonight.” He was too embarrassed to admit how long it had been since he’d last gotten laid, and he hoped she didn’t ask.

Rey paused as she considered something, then she said, “I haven’t been with anyone since I last got tested, and I’m on birth control.” She twisted her arm to show him the little bump where the implant sat under her skin. “I’m just saying.”

A warning bell went off in Ben’s brain, telling him that there was a certain level of intimacy in this that he’d never had with anyone in the past, and they’d ventured into the “is hatesex supposed to be this intimate?” territory once already. But _fuck_ , how was he supposed to turn _that_ down?

“Me too,” he said. “I mean, I haven’t been with anyone since I last got tested, either. Not the birth control thing.” _Smooth._

She smirked at him, then shook off his hands on her wrists. “What are we waiting for, then?”

And then next thing he knew, his pants were off and then he was naked and kneeling behind Rey, who was facing away from him with one hand braced on the headboard as he lined himself up. “Are you sure about this?” he asked one last time.

“Just shut up and fuck me already, Ben.” 

And yeah, part of him (okay, most of him) wanted to immediately set a brutal pace, but he wasn’t an idiot, he knew he needed to give her a moment to adjust. And anyway, _oh, fuck,_ the way he was slowly sliding into her was making his head spin and she was so hot and so _tight_ and there was no _way_ he was letting this end before he could really get started. Rey cursed softly as she shifted her hips until he was buried deep inside of her. “Are you okay?” he breathed.

“How many more times do I have to say it? Shut up and— _fuck me._ ” The end of the sentence came out in a gasp as he slid his hips back and snapped back into her. “Yeah, like that. Fuck, Ben, I can’t believe how good that feels. Do it agai— _fuck._ ”

Normally, the sound of Rey’s voice pissed him off, but he couldn’t get enough of the sounds she was making as he picked up speed and fucking _pounded_ into her. He was vaguely aware that he was saying all sorts of gibberish to her. _Do you like that? How does it feel, knowing that someone you hate is making you feel this good? I really hate you, but I can’t wait to make you come apart on my cock like you came apart on my tongue._ Hell, he didn’t even know he was _capable_ of talking like that. But then again, nothing was normal where Rey was concerned.

And the scary part was, something about it all felt so _right_. He shouldn’t have been enjoying this so much. Fucking someone he couldn’t stand—even if she was the hottest person he’d ever met—was supposed to feel wrong. But he was having the best sex of his entire life, and even though it was a one-time thing, it was a mindblowing one-time thing.

And it was definitely the hatesex. Not the...other thing.

“You’re the _fucking worst_ and I will fucking _kill you_ if you don’t start fucking me harder right this fucking second,” Rey gasped as she braced herself against the headboard. 

There was a very good chance she was going to kill him anyway because what the _fuck_ , Ben didn’t even know that it was possible to feel this good. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. “Don’t fucking order me around,” he growled, his hips starting to stutter because he was _so close_ but _fuck_ he wanted to feel her fall apart under him first.

“Shut up and make me—” She didn’t even finish the sentence before she came, moaning and cursing as her muscles clenched around his cock. It was that that sent him over the edge as well a moment later, hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise as he spilled inside of her.

He didn’t know how long they paused there, catching their breath while the aftershocks faded. But then Rey was pushing him back and hissing as he pulled out before collapsing on her stomach. Ben somehow found the strength to twist so that he collapsed on his back next to her.

_So what now?_ he wondered. Like hell he was going to turn on his side to wrap his arms around her… Right?

Not that he had the energy to move. Ben was still jetlagged after getting back late last night, and the post-orgasm endorphins were settling in fast for both of them. _Fucking hell, if only I’d known that all it took to shut her up…_ He was vaguely aware of Rey murmuring “I’ll be right back” before he passed out.

 

* * *

 

Rey had intended to go back to Ben’s room after she got cleaned up in the bathroom, but that was really only because all of her clothes were still in there. Getting back in bed with him would be weird, even though it was tempting because holy _shit_ she had never had such intense sex before and she was honestly exhausted by it. (It was worth it. Oh, was it _ever_ worth it. She was going to be wonderfully sore for days, and it was _so_ worth it.) 

But, like, what now? She didn’t want to talk about it. She doubted he did, either. And yeah, she figured the sex was going to be good, given the mutual attraction and the way it had felt to kiss him back at the bar, but that was...way more intense than she was expecting. She’d been trying to piss Ben off when she’d accused him of being more affected by eating her out than she was, but there was a 99% chance she was going to get off thinking back on that in the future. Which was kind of embarrassing, given the power struggle that was their (non) relationship.

Thank the stars she was saved by having to talk to him about it, though, because when she got back in the bedroom, he was already passed out. Her lips twisted into a small smile at the sight. _I found another way to shut you up._ He looked more peaceful than she’d ever seen him look, which was...strange? Uncomfortable? In any case, it gave her a moment to pause and let her eyes roam over his body (which, like, how was it even _possible_ for someone to be so hot? And what was up with the scars?).  

She paused when she took in the words marked over his right knee. The way he’d reacted to seeing the words etched on her skin was unexpected. Okay, so she didn’t really know how she’d expect him to react in the first place—it wasn’t like she thought they were actually going to _do_ this—but it was strange that for all of this “this is bullshit,” he seemed afraid of her marks. 

To be fair, she was also having a very uncomfortable reaction to seeing the words _Go fuck yourself with a cactus, you corporate bag of dicks_ etched across someone’s thigh. (No, not just some nameless, faceless stranger. Not anymore, she realized. _Dammit._ ) She’d honestly been surprised when the words flew out of her mouth when they first met. Not that she was the nicest person on the planet—Rey didn’t have any illusions about that—but cursing at a stranger, especially when she was supposed to be representing her company? It had been a weird move, even for her. But then again, Ben just seemed to inspire that kind of reaction from her, so he was to blame, really.

She shook her head, not wanting to wait around for Ben to wake up and see her staring at him. She dressed as quietly as possible before slipping out of the building and calling an Uber to take her home. The ride back to her apartment was just long enough for her to start to digest what had just happened, and somehow, she managed to make it back inside the tiny apartment she lived in alone before the panic attack set in.

_Oh shit,_ the panic said. _What have I done?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Ben and Rey have really ~~intimate~~ intense sex. They're convinced that it's just meaningless hatesex. Then Ben passes out (thanks, jetlag), Rey sneaks out and has a panic attack on the way home.
> 
> Today’s AU worldbuilding question: Are casual relationships or one-night stands with someone who isn’t your soulmate frowned upon, encouraged, or something-in-between?


	8. So much for “nothing happened”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing happened between Rey and Ben. Nothing at all.
> 
> (Nobody believes this.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If smut isn’t your thing, there’s a little bit (ish?) in this chapter as well. Skip to the end notes if you want details.

Ben woke up reaching out for something, but he wasn’t really sure what. In his half-asleep state, he was mildly alarmed by the fact that he was naked, but a glance at the clock said that it was 5:48AM, so he rolled over and fell back asleep without giving it another thought.

He woke up again a few hours later, and last night’s rather... _aggressive_ activities came slamming back to him. He pushed himself up and looked over at the other side of the bed, but it didn’t look slept in. _When did Rey leave?_ he wondered. Not that he really wanted her to stick around, but...well, he wouldn’t have minded going for round two. One-night stands included the morning after, right?

And, like, had she really been so uncomfortable that she couldn’t just pass out like he had? It was almost like Ben was disappointed by waking up alone, even though he woke up alone every day and had done so for the vast majority of his life.

It was probably just that he felt offended, actually. Like, _she_ had been the one to initiate this whole thing. Okay, yeah, so he had _maybe_ said something that _potentially_ could have initialized things, but she was the one who had actually kissed him. And it wasn’t like she was disappointed, was she? It wasn’t like she didn’t come. Twice. In a very vocal, very visceral way. (And now he was getting hard again because _fuck_ that was literally the hottest thing he’d ever experienced. So much for not being affected by the stupid _thing_ between them. He still refused to concede on that point.)

Shit. Having sex with Rey had been a mistake. An amazing, staggering, mind-blowing mistake.

Oh well. The upside of Ben’s life being a series of mistakes was that he’d had plenty of experience moving on as if it wasn’t bothering him at all. He could do this. The next time he faced Rey (because let’s be real, the universe loved fucking—poor choice of words; _messing_ with them) he was going to act like nothing had happened and like he hadn’t woken up about five seconds away from getting off at the memory of her saying _shut up and fuck me already, Ben_.

 

* * *

 

Apparently, finally fucking Ben Solo seemed to satisfy whatever _powers that be_ that were determined to get Rey and Ben together that she managed to avoid him for a whole two weeks after their (crazy, wonderful, stupid) one-night stand. The fact that Rey had been avoiding going out for coffee, snacks, drinks, what-have-you had _nothing_ to do with that, surely. But there were only so many times she could turn down invitations to go out for post-work margaritas (“Sorry, I have to go work out,” “Sorry, I have to shampoo the carpet in my apartment,” “Sorry, I can’t go out, I’m sick”) before Poe demanded that she go out for a pre-launch team bonding party.

“I don’t care how busy you are these days,” he said. “This is important for team solidarity. Besides, you’ve been working so hard to get our app and website up and running. You deserve a break.” So the Friday before the Concrete Resistance app was set to officially launch, Rey found herself following Rose, Poe, Kaydel, and the rest of Concrete Resistance to a small hipster bar for dinner and drinks.

“Can you believe it’s almost here?” Kaydel gushed as they waited at the bar for their drink. “We’ve been putting in so much work. This has been a dream of ours for so long, and I can’t believe that we’re finally going live with it.” 

Rey knew the story—Poe and Kaydel had known each other since they were kids, and they decided to go into business together along ith Jessika a few years ago—but seeing how proud Kaydel was made Rey’s heart swell a little bit. It wasn’t common knowledge that Poe, Kaydel, and Rose were soulmates, but more than a few of their coworkers had commented on how _close_ Poe and Kaydel were, even by business partner standards. Seeing the three of them swapping smiles and celebrating, as heartwarming as it was, made Rey feel uncomfortable in a way that she didn’t want to examine too closely. 

“Here’s to making your dreams happen,” Jessika said, holding up her drink. “And here’s to taking a moment to breathe before we kick things up a notch.” The rest of the group laughed as they clinked glasses together. Rey smiled, trying to put the strange discomfort out of mind.

She was at the bar waiting for her second drink, chatting with Rose when it happened. Rey suddenly got the sense that a certain someone was nearby (which was weird; when had she developed _that_ sixth sense?) as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. _It’s not him, he can’t be here,_ she thought. _Besides, there are a million bars in this city. It’s not like_ — But she couldn’t stop herself from looking up and spotting Ben Solo on the other side of the bar.

_It’s fine, you’re fine, you’re not affected by what happened in any way at all,_ she tried to tell herself. But as they made eye contact, all she could think of was the way she’d been able to taste herself on his lips and the way he’d left bruises on her hips that felt _good_ when she’d pressed them the next day and the way he managed to say the right things for once while he was fucking her and—

“Holy shit,” Rose said, grabbing Rey’s arm. “You slept with him. You slept with Ben Solo.”

“What? No way,” she said, feeling her face heat up. “I hate him. Why would I sleep with him?”

“Rey, you’re a terrible liar, and I have never seen two people eyefuck so hard. You went home with him after Finn and I left the bar a couple of weeks ago. I _knew_ you would!”

“You guys were _not_ subtle, and it was weird that you did that,” Rey said. “ _Nothing_ happened.”

“Was it good? Soulmate sex is the _best_ , isn’t it?” Rose said with a grin.

“I wouldn’t know,” Rey said, trying to will her face to cool down.

“Liar,” Rose said. “You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”

“ _No._ Please drop it,” Rey said.

Rose gave her a skeptical look, but she didn’t say anything more about the one-night stand that Rey was denying. “I wonder who those people are with him?” she said.

Rey chanced another look across the bar. Ben had turned around and was facing away from them now, deep in conversation with a redheaded man and a stunningly beautiful blonde woman. “Who cares?” she said as she took her drink from the bartender and walked off to rejoin the rest of her coworkers.

Stars, fucking him was _such_ a mistake. It was bad enough that she kept dreaming about it, waking up in the middle of the night to sleepily reach her hand down between her legs to relieve the tension she’d felt rising thanks to her dreams. But now she couldn’t even _look_ at him without feeling that same stupid ache as her blood rushed south.

Rey had always been good at denying things. She’d denied the fact that her parents had abandoned her until she moved to the US. She denied the way it hurt knowing that she grew up in conditions that most of her classmates and, later, coworkers couldn’t even imagine. She denied the fact that she still lived with a “it’s easier to not let anyone get close than it is to be abandoned again” mindset (which her therapist kept trying to make her discuss). But she was finding it very, very, _very_ difficult to deny the fact that if she had the opportunity, she would absolutely hatefuck Ben Solo again.

Because that’s all it was. A really, scarily good hatefuck.

_That’s all._

 

* * *

 

The last person that Ben wanted to see when Phasma dragged him and Hux out for drinks was Rey Jakkusen.

He’d been saved from the anxiety of running into her for the past couple of weeks because he’d been on an exhausting multi-city trip to take care of various First Order Properties legal matters. (Ben had finally gotten so desperate that he’d bullied the accounting department to increase his travel budget so that he had as many reasons as possible to avoid being in the office.) Except he hadn’t completely been free of that anxiety because knowing his luck, Rey would have a vacation or whatever planned in Hong Kong at the same time that Ben was going to be there. (Not that she could probably afford an intercontinental flight on her salary. But luck never seemed to be on Ben’s side.) The upside of so much travel, though, was that it was a small distraction from his sex drive, which meant that it was a small distraction from thinking about how Rey sounded and felt as he pounded into her. It was the first time in his life that he’d ever been grateful for jetlag.

But despite the jetlag, he couldn’t say no to Phasma. Ben was irrationally afraid of going back to his apartment, considering the last night he’d spent there was the one with Rey. And yeah, he had a cleaning service that came in once a week to clean, since Ben was always too busy to bother, so it wasn’t like he was going to sleep on sheets that smelled like Rey. But it still gave him a weird butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling to think about how surreal the whole thing was.

Judging by the look Rey was giving him, though, she was feeling the same way. And _oh, stars_ was it terrifying to think that they seemed to actually agree on big, scary issues like parental abandonment and fate and soulmates.

Their stare was broken by the sight of Rose grabbing Rey’s arm. Ben was dying to know what they were talking about ( _Are they talking about me? What did Rey say—_ ), but he was knocked out of his stare by the sound of Hux’s voice making fun of Ben’s jetlag. 

“You’re such a wimp when it comes to travel,” Hux said. “I can’t believe you’ve made it up as far in the ranks as you have.”

“Fuck off,” Ben said as Phasma laughed. “ _You_ try going to four different continents in two weeks.”

The conversation lapsed into their normal sniping at each other and shop talk. _How’s the Mustafar Corp merger going? When are we going to get the permits to build on all that space in Naboo National Park? Can you_ believe _what Janine in sales said to me the other day?_ Ben was only half-paying attention, the other half of his attention on Rey. Not that he was looking _at_ her, but it was like he knew exactly where she was and that she was trying to ignore him as hard as he was trying to ignore her. Not that he particularly wanted to see her anyway, but if Hux spotted her and made the connection to Concrete Resistance...it might cause more problems for Ben than he already had. Hell, Ben would have gladly gone on five more four-continents-in-two-weeks trips if it meant keeping Rey away from Hux.

Wait. When had Ben started caring about keeping Rey away from First Order Properties? Wasn’t that the whole _point_ of trying to talk to her in the first place? 

_Okay. Clearly the jetlag is becoming a problem._ He needed to leave before his thoughts could get any weirder. He paid for his drink and left as Hux gave him one last “go sleep off your jetlag, you wimp” before stepping out into the cool night air. He took a few deep breaths before pulling out his phone to request an Uber.

“You look like shit,” a familiar voice said from behind him.

“Your concern is noted,” he said without looking up from his phone. _She_ didn’t look like shit in her dark skinny jeans, plain green shirt, and light jacket. How did she always manage to make such simple, casual clothing look so good? (Although at this point, Ben thought that she could probably wear a potato sack and still look hot. But that was definitely only because he knew what lay beneath said potato sack.) “Go away. I’m too tired for your bullshit tonight.”

“That’s a first.” He was trying to make a point of not looking, but he could feel her moving closer to him. What was she doing? She’d made it pretty damn clear where they stood. _A one-time thing. That’s all._ “I’m in the mood for a good fight.”

“A good fight, or a good fuck?” The words slipped out before he could process them, and he felt his face turn as red as hers. _Both. Please say both._ When it came to their (non) relationship, fighting and fucking were essentially the same thing.

“I thought we agreed that was a one-time thing,” she said. There was a slight tremor in her voice, and even though he was so tired he could barely stand up straight, Ben couldn’t keep a satisfied smirk off of his face.

“And yet here you are, following me out of a bar.” 

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just waiting for an Uber.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Okay, so _that_ was actually a lie. Ben didn’t think she’d ever lied to him. She was always as open as he was about their mutual hatred. Which was really refreshing. Neither of them bothered with social niceties. He liked that about her. 

Wait. He liked _what_?

“So are you,” she said.

“Fuck off,” he said, closing his eyes. _Where the hell is that driver?_ “I just spent two weeks on the road. I don’t have the energy for this.”

He _sensed_ her reaction to that. When had he become so in tune with her? _A terrifying question for another time. Like never._ “No wonder you look like shit,” she murmured.

“Again: your concern is noted.”

“You never did answer my question, you know,” she said.

Ben opened his eyes to give her a confused look. “What question?” 

“Whether or not you’re affected by this at all.”

His breath hitched. He knew the answer, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

He was saved from having to answer by the blare of his phone, signaling that his Uber had arrived. He all but ran for the car without giving Rey an answer. He couldn’t stop himself from turning back to look at her as the driver pulled away. It was too dark to read the expression on her face, but he swore that she seemed equal parts terrified and smug about the whole thing.

 

* * *

 

Rey _hadn’t_ been lying when she told Ben that she’d gone outside to wait for an Uber. Okay, so maybe she was feeling sort of weird and left-out as she watched the rest of Concrete Resistance talking and celebrating the last week before their launch, and maybe that was mostly because she couldn’t keep from noticing the way that Poe, Kaydel, and Rose kept sharing smiles and jokes. And maybe it was because her new sixth Ben Solo sense noticed him leaving and she found herself unable to let him leave without at least acknowledging his existence. But she hadn’t been _lying._

And yeah, she’d been trying to insult him, but she’d also been concerned. The dark circles under his eyes had nothing to do with _her_ , right? She knew that she had a pretty large part in whatever stupid “bring down Concrete Resistance” project his boss had assigned to him (and, by extension, Finn) and she had no doubt that even if he hadn’t been equally as shaken as she was about what had happened between them ( _you had sex, Rey, just say it_ ), it still made things even more complicated for him at work.

But that didn’t explain why she’d brought _it_ up. And that didn’t explain why she was disappointed that he left without answering her.

Whatever. He was an asshole. He knew he was an asshole. She knew he was an asshole. It wasn’t worth getting upset over. So it was a surprise when she got a text halfway through a _The Good Place_ marathon the next night that said _I still think you’re more affected by this than I am._

Ben Solo  
  
**Rey:** So you admit that you are affected by this?  
  
**Ben:** The sex was amazing and you know it.  
  
**Rey:** The most amazing part was the way it made you shut the fuck up.  
  
**Ben:** Liar. You loved the things I said to you as I fucked you harder than anyone has ever fucked you before.  
  


That was a bold statement.

**Rey:** When did I ever say that?   
  
**Ben:** Please. You followed me out of the bar last night hoping to go home with me again.  
  
**Rey:** You’re projecting. I bet I’m the best lay you’ve ever had.   
  
**Ben:** Now you’re the one who’s projecting.  
  
**Rey:** Admit it. You want this to be a booty call, but you don’t have the balls to say how badly you want me because you’re too stubborn to admit that you liked it more than I did.  
  
**Rey:** You’ve thought about it a lot, haven’t you?  
  
**Ben:** Have you?  
  


Rey paused. She didn’t want to lie to him. She respected him too much for anything less than brutal honesty, in a weird way.

**Rey:** When I saw you last night, all I could think of was the bruises you left on my hips because of how hard you were gripping them when you came inside of me.  
  


That was honest. And it didn’t reveal how badly she wanted to fuck him again. Right?

**Ben:** You want me to do it again, don’t you?   
  
**Rey:** It was the roughest sex I’ve ever had.  
  
**Ben:** Me too.  
  


A pause.

**Ben:** Okay, yes, I’ve thought a lot about it. I’m still thinking about it now.   
  


Another pause. Rey was still working out the best way to respond to that when he sent a third message.

**Ben:** You should have stayed for round two the next morning.  
  


Was he...upset that she’d left? That’s what he wanted, right? They hated each other. Why the hell would he have wanted to wake up next to her?

No, it was definitely just the sex thing. And Rey would have been lying if she said that she hadn’t wanted round two, either.

**Rey:** What, your hand doesn’t quite compare to my cunt?  
  
**Ben:** Fuck, no.  
  


_Oh fuck._ The thought of Ben getting off at the thought of _her_ turned Rey on more than she realized it would. She shifted, suddenly aware of how wet she was.

**Rey:** How hard are you right now?  
  
**Ben:** How much does it turn you on if I say yes, I’m hard, and yes, it’s because I’m thinking about you?  
  
**Rey:** Fuck, Ben.  
  
**Rey:** If I didn’t hate you so much, I would have stayed for round two.  
  
**Rey:** The next morning still counts for a one-time thing.  
  
**Ben:** Finally, something we both agree on.   
  


Rey paused again. She had another question that might end the conversation. Which was fine, if it did, she was just going to go dig her vibrator out and try to pretend she wasn’t disappointed by the answer.

**Rey:** Sexting doesn’t mean anything, right?   
  


Her heart pounded as she waited for an answer.

**Ben:** I think we can both agree on that.  
  
**Rey:** Good. Then I can tell you that you’re a fantastic lay but I still hate you and I am so wet right now, you wouldn’t even believe.  
  
**Ben:** Fuck, Rey.  
  
**Ben:** I hate you too, but I love the way you begged me to fuck you harder.  
  
**Rey:** How many times have you made yourself come thinking about it?  
  
**Ben:** More than I should admit, to be honest. Less than if I hadn’t spent so much time on the road lately.  
  


Holy shit, the fact that he couldn’t keep his mind off of her… Rey got a lot of satisfaction over knowing how badly he wanted her, but it was tinged with implications that she didn’t want to think about.

**Rey:** Are you touching yourself right now?  
  
**Ben:** Kinda hard to type with one hand.  
  
**Ben:** Are you?  
  


Okay. That was fair. It was pretty difficult to type with one hand. There was only so much relief she could get from shifting around, squeezing her thighs in search of friction.

**Rey:** If I was, I wouldn’t still be typing.  
  
**Rey:** But fuck, the thought of me being the reason you’re getting off is so hot.   
  
**Ben:** I want to taste you again, Rey.  
  


Wait. What?

Ben seemed to have the same reaction, because he backtracked in a series of very rapid texts.

**Ben:** I mean  
  
**Ben:** Wait  
  
**Ben:** Sorry, I just  
  
**Ben:** That was so hot  
  
**Ben:** I know it was a one-time thing  
  
**Ben:** Sorry  
  
**Rey:** It's fine  
  


After all, it wasn’t like Rey didn’t want that, either. Which was weird, because from a purely technical point of view, she’d had better experiences getting head. (There was that one girl in university who she still thought about sometimes...) But she’d never had the sheer _chemistry_ that she had with Ben. Which was, obviously, a hatesex thing, and not the _other_ thing.

**Ben:** Sorry, I just made this so weird.  
  
**Rey:** No, don’t worry about it.  
  
**Rey:** I...I want that, too.  
  
**Rey:** I still hate you though, and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just sex.  
  
**Ben:** Right, yeah. Just sex.  
  
**Ben:** You’re serious?   
  
**Rey:** Just sex?  
  
**Ben:** Just sex.  
  
**Rey:** Can I come over?  
  
**Ben:** Please.  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben start sexting towards the end of this chapter and then it turns into a booty call. Nothing super explicit, but definitely nsfw.
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: do you think soulmate sex is more about the chemistry or the technique? Is it always perfect? What about asexuals or demisexuals? (I am neither asexual nor demisexual, so please let me know if there’s better phrasing I should use with that question!)
> 
> ~~Also, please let me know if the formatting is confusing for the texting. It's something I'm playing around with.~~ Edit: [This fantastic tutorial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434845/chapters/14729722#workskin) taught me how to display the texting as a phone screen!


	9. So much for “having things in common”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey have some things in common...until they don’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way - 441 kudos?? You guys don't know how happy (and flattered!) I am by that <3

It became a thing, but they still hated each other, so it was okay.

Or at least, that’s what Ben kept telling himself.

They’d silently agreed that certain topics were not open for discussion (family, work, and soulmates) so it was mostly booty calls until one night when Rey actually fell asleep in his bed, at which point they both knew a line had been crossed, so they (silently) agreed to never discuss it again and went back to strictly booty calls. Not that he minded having her there—it had actually been nice to see her with her guard down for once—but it was a line that neither of them was comfortable with. Better to push people away at the start than to be at risk of abandonment. That was something that Ben had learned pretty early on. He suspected that Rey had, too.

And anyway, yeah, maybe they agreed on little things like where the best coffee in the city was (Kanata Brews was something else they’d agreed on; they’d worked out a schedule so that they didn’t have to run into each other during daylight hours) or the best movie genre (sci-fi, of course). And it turned out that they both liked exercise that involved some sort of fight (leading Ben to wonder if it would cross another line if he invited her to come work out with him sometime). But they still hated each other, and they still wouldn’t discuss the big-ticket items.

They’d stopped running into each other as often, but that was only because Ben had started traveling more for work and definitely had nothing to do with fate (or whatever) finally being satisfied that they weren’t fighting. (Well, okay, they still were, in a way. Hatesex was a sort of fight, wasn’t it?) But even while he was on the road, they were swapping messages. He got a certain satisfaction over sending something like _I’m thinking about how you moaned as I had my cock down your throat last week and the way you looked when I came on your tits_ knowing that it was ten in the morning where she was and she couldn’t do anything about it because she was at work. And then hours later, she’d get revenge in the form of _Yeah, and then you licked it all off, remember? Because you know as well as I do that you’ll do anything I tell you to do in bed, even though you pretend otherwise_.

 

Rey Jakkusen  
  
**Rey:** I have you wrapped around my fingers which, coincidentally, are about to be knuckle deep inside me right now  
  
**Rey:** It’s too bad you’re not here right now. Your fingers are better at this than mine are.  
  
**Ben:** Stop sexting me when I’m in an airport.  
  
**Ben:** The last thing I need while going through security is to think about how good you must look right now.  
  
**Rey:** Stop sexting me when I’m at work.  
  
**Ben:** Never. I love how much you hate it when I turn you on with just a few words.  
  
**Rey:** Turnabout is fair play, asshole.  
  


 

Ben kept himself so busy with every other work project that came across his desk that he barely had time to think about what a massive conflict of interest this was. As long as Snoke got results, he would forget about the Concrete Resistance thing. It wasn’t that Ben wanted to disobey his boss or fail at any task set out for him, but he just didn’t see the point. Yeah, Concrete Resistance was gaining traction, especially since their app went live and they started doing more PR events, in their city and in other nearby cities. But as long as they didn’t get an endorsement from any big-name celebrities or politicians, how much harm could they do when going up against a company like First Order Properties?

“You know that FN-2187 is still mine to manage, right?” Phasma said one morning as she poked her head into his office.

“Who?” She had a bad habit of referring to her employees by their ID numbers and not by their actual names. Ben couldn’t figure out why; she probably just did it to be an asshole. (Just like everyone else at First Order Properties.)

“That research tech I loaned you ages ago for a project that seems to mysteriously have fallen off your radar, according to Hux.”

Ben glared at her. “He’s helpful,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate. The truth was that he liked working with Finn, even though he’d never admit it. Finn was smart, and when he wasn’t complaining about the Concrete Resistance project, he was good at helping Ben with research outside of legal matters. Plus, there was the thing where he wasn’t afraid to stand up to Ben and he liked being in the office about as much as Ben did, so he was always willing to be dragged out for coffee and, occasionally, post-work drinks.

“Too bad for you that he’s not a lawyer,” Phasma said. “Because he’s still mine.”

“I’m pretty sure I outrank you,” he warned her. “Fuck off. I have work to do.”

Hours later, Finn walked into his office, shut the door behind him, and slumped into the chair across the desk from Ben. “I hate my boss,” he muttered.

Ben snorted. “She thinks I’m trying to poach you.”

“Aren’t you?”

The question made Ben pause. “Not intentionally, no,” he said slowly. “Anyway, I thought you were looking for a new job.”

“Not a lot of companies in this city who want to hire someone with a bachelor’s degree in communications,” Finn said. “And I don’t want to move.”

“Because of the rest of your...people?” Damn, just _thinking_ the word ‘soulmate’ made Ben blush these days.

Finn raised an eyebrow as if he knew what Ben was thinking. “Yes, the rest of my _people,_ ” he said. “Speaking of, how’s Rey?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Liar.”

“Did you come here to work, or did you come here to ask invasive questions about my personal life?”

Finn wisely decided to drop the subject, and he launched into details about research for a (non-Concrete Resistance) project. But he couldn’t resist making one last comment about it as he packed up to leave later on that evening. “Thank you for dropping the Concrete Resistance thing,” he said quietly. “Whatever your reasons are for it, I appreciate it. I’m sure Rey does, too.”

“I haven’t dropped it,” Ben said. “There have just been more pressing projects for me to work on. Rey has nothing to do with it.”

“If you say so,” said Finn. “By the way, you’ve got a little something on your neck, sticking out from under your collar.”

_Asshole. I_ told _her not leave a mark._ “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said as he felt his face heat up.

“Sure you don’t. Say hi to Rey for me.” He laughed as Ben threw a pen at him, then left without another word.

 

* * *

 

On some level, Rey knew that she was going for the gold medal in ‘lying to herself’ when it came to her (non, _definitely_ non) relationship with Ben Solo. All of her past ‘no strings attached’ setups had faded within a couple of weeks as the chemistry faded people got bored, which was fine, because she never wanted things to get super serious anyway and it wasn’t like she wasn’t used to people abandoning her. But the chemistry wasn’t fading with Ben.

Well, it wasn’t like they spent a whole lot of talking outside of sex. Yeah, occasionally little things came up. (Apparently, they’d both minored in linguistics in university, and they shared a weakness for astronomy documentaries. That had come up when she’d gone through his Netflix viewing history after he offered to share his login info with her.) She knew they were skirting around the really heavy topics. She refused to allow the emotional intimacy of discussing her past, even if he would probably understand. Besides, she was still waiting for him to abandon her, just like everyone else had. It was only a matter of time before he got bored and moved on to someone else.

But stars, he made her feel so _good_ , and it helped stave off the loneliness to know how badly he wanted her, too. Even though it was just sex.

And thank the stars they had both dropped the work thing. She was _never_ going to leave Concrete Resistance for him, and she was sick of being told _no_ about him endorsing their company. Plus, neither of them wanted anyone else to know they were sleeping together, and if he suddenly changed his mind, they’d probably have to deal with a bunch of awkward questions that neither of them wanted to answer.

Well, they’d mostly dropped the work thing, anyway. She showed up at Ben’s apartment one night following a _get your perfect ass over here right now_ text to a slightly changed atmosphere.

He was distracted, she realized as they made out on his couch. Which immediately sent her into a panic spiral because _this is it, this is when he finally grows bored of me and abandons me_ coupled with _how dare he be distracted when I am topless and on his lap_. She somehow summoned up the courage to say, “Look, if you’re not going to give me your undivided attention, I’m going to go.”

Ben froze for a moment, and then sighed as he leaned back into the couch, letting his hands slide down her sides so that they were only loosely holding her hips. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right.”

She found herself suddenly trying to hold back tears. _This is it. He’s abandoning me. Why do I care so much? I know what this is. Of fucking_ course _he’s abandoning me. I don’t know why I expected otherwise._

_Everyone always leaves me._

“I know we have an unspoken thing where we don’t talk about work bullshit, but there’s all this work bullshit going on,” he said. 

“Okay,” she said slowly, still trying to hold back the surprisingly sharp sting of rejection. “That’s fine. I get it. I’ll just get out of your hair.”

“No, wait,” he said, suddenly wrapping his arms around her waist. He pulled her in and pressed his face into her neck. “Don’t go.”

She frowned. _What?_ “Do you...want to talk about it?” What else was she supposed to say?

“I probably shouldn’t,” he murmured. “It sort of involves you.”

This was incredibly dangerous territory. “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t,” she murmured, but her stupid body wasn’t listening and she found herself wrapping her arms around his neck so that she could trace little circles on his back.

“Please don’t leave.” The words were so quiet that she almost thought she was imagining them. “Just—wait.”

Now she was holding back tears for a completely different reason. As much as she hated him (and she _did_ still hate him, of course. Right?), she knew what loneliness felt like. And she couldn’t just leave him like this. “Okay,” she whispered. “I know what it’s like to feel alone.” _What are you doing,_ the warning bells in her brain said. _Don’t do this, don’t say this, this is supposed to be_ just sex _, remember?_

“You’re not alone,” he breathed as he tightened his grip on her.

Her breath hitched. It was the first time anyone had said anything _remotely_ like that to her. And even though it was coming from Ben Solo—who was a total asshole, a bag of dicks, an all-around terrible person—the words hit her in a place that she didn’t know existed. “Neither are you,” she found herself whispering as she blinked back tears.

 

* * *

 

They’d crossed another line the night that Rey had come over and they didn’t have sex for the first time ever. Ben didn’t know what had come over him that night. It was just work bullshit. Which shouldn’t have bothered him, because his entire job was work bullshit. But Hux had started dropping hints about Ben’s lack of progress and suggesting that he wasn’t 100% devoted to First Order Properties, and then Snoke had gotten in on it, and Ben was just so sick of Snoke and Hux and Phasma and everything about his job. But he felt trapped, because what would he do for work if he didn’t work there? There was nothing else he could do, nothing else he was good at. He’d burned all of his bridges outside of the First Order in the most spectacular way possible long ago.

So he texted Rey, figuring that sex would distract him from his problems for a couple of hours. But because the source of the argument had to do with her and with Concrete Resistance, it had backfired, and all he could think was _I think this is all wrong_ and _I don’t think I want to hurt her_ and _I am so alone._ On some level, a part of him knew that Rey would just _get_ it, because so much of their sniping and fighting came from the same place. And then having that confirmed _did_ something to him, but he still hadn’t quite figured out what.

Instead of getting laid that night, they’d ended up watching a dumb movie on his couch instead. Which was not how things were supposed to work between them, so they ended up avoiding each other for a few days after that. Which was really stupid, because for all of their _you’re not alone_ , they were back to avoiding each other, which made Ben feel lonelier than ever. (Although, if he was being honest with himself, it was what he deserved.)

But then he was out of town again and Rey texted him _You have no idea how badly I want to sit on your face right now. I hope you’re reading this in an airport, asshole_ and things returned to normal. Mostly normal, anyway. They didn’t acknowledge that night, and they didn’t discuss anything other than sex, but there was a lingering hint of _something else_ that Ben refused to think about.

And work still sucked, and his boss was still an ass, and Hux had started hinting that maybe he needed to take over the Concrete Resistance project so that he could do things _his_ way. Ben had always turned a blind eye on Hux’s methods, which he suspected were less-than-legal, because what business of it was his as long as he wasn’t doing anything that might get him disbarred?

“I’m done waiting around, Solo,” Snoke said one day a couple of weeks after the _you’re not alone_ incident. “Where are the results for the Concrete Resistance takedown? What about the girl?”

_The girl._ Fuck, Ben could already feel his face heating up. Snoke had an uncanny way of getting the truth out of people, and his connection with Rey was the last thing he wanted his boss to know about. It was _his_ thing, in a life where he was starting to realize how little control he had over everything. “I’m looking for legal loopholes,” he said. “But, as I’m sure you’re aware, I have had other priorities.”

Snoke narrowed his eyes. “That’s not it,” he said. “There’s something you’re hiding from me. Something about the girl.”

Ben fought to keep a straight face. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “She’s nothing. Nobody.”

“Not to you, I think,” Snoke said, his features shifting into a more calculated look. “I didn’t think you’d actually go through with it when I suggested you seduce her into leaving that company behind, but you seem to have fallen into your own trap, Solo.”

“There’s nothing there,” he said again, clenching his fists under the table as his heart started to pound.

“She’s distracting you from your other duties. I can feel it.”

What the fuck did that even _mean_? “I’ve given my life to this company,” he said in a low tone. “She means _nothing_ to me.”

“If she won’t respond to _your_ job offer, maybe she’ll respond to mine,” Snoke said. “Bring her to me.”

_No._ The thought of exposing Rey to Snoke’s seediness made Ben’s stomach turn. When had _that_ changed? It was one thing to feel repulsed by Snoke’s claims that “women don’t belong in tech.” But this was personal. And that scared Ben.

“What do you want me to do, knock her out and kidnap her?” he said, unable to keep the frustration out of his tone. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me or this company.”

“If that’s what it takes, then yes,” snapped Snoke. “You have your orders. _Follow through,_ for once in your _useless_ life.”

By the time Snoke kicked him out of his office, Ben was so stressed out that he felt like he was floating outside of his body, watching himself walk downstairs and out of the building. It wasn’t until he was outside on the street that he snapped back into himself and realized just how badly he had fucked _everything_ up.

 

* * *

 

Everything changed at Concrete Resistance when Kaydel called everyone in for an emergency meeting to tell them that a politician had caught wind of the company’s efforts and was endorsing their company. And not just any politician, either: Senator Leia Organa. Famous for her efforts to fight back against Empire Oil and Drilling in the 80s. Famous for being the adopted daughter of pro-environmental activists. (Infamous for being the biological daughter of the CEO of Empire Oil and Drilling, however. As if political views were something that were inherited by blood.) Famous for being the twin of the equally famous (and mysterious) environmental rights lawyer Luke Skywalker, who had retired suddenly about ten years ago. According to Poe, who paid more attention to this sort of thing than Rey did, it had something to do with a scandal involving Senator Organa’s son, but nobody would confirm anything. And Poe only knew _that_ because she was a friend of a friend of a friend.

In short, Senator Organa’s endorsement was everything that Concrete Resistance had been working for, and there was no way that they were going to lose traction now that they were working with such a famous politician.

Rey couldn’t keep her elation to herself as she texted Ben _are you home? I’m coming over_. She was so wrapped up in her own happiness that she barely noticed his surprise when she immediately flung herself at him when he opened the door to let her in.

“You’re in a good mood,” he said, sounding annoyed.

“I know we don’t talk about work stuff, but you owe me from that one time a couple of weeks ago, and we got some really great news today,” she gushed.

He froze. “What kind of good news?” he said.

If she hadn’t been so distracted, she would have noticed just how tense he had been since she’d walked through the door. But she didn’t, so she kept going. “A politician is endorsing Concrete Resistance,” she said. “ _Finally_. And not just _any_ politician, either.”

“Which politician?” he said slowly.

Rey blinked. Why did he sound so apprehensive? It couldn’t just be that he didn’t want her to ask him to endorse them again, could it? “Senator Leia Organa,” she said. “Not that I pay a ton of attention to politics since I can’t vote here, but she’s so famous for her environmentalism work.”

“Yeah,” Ben said tightly. “I know.”

She pulled back. Something about his tone was wrong. “Right, yeah, you’re an attorney in property development. You probably pay more attention to that stuff than I do.”

He took a deep breath. “I know that because she’s my mother.”

_She’s my mother._ The words echoed around Rey’s head for a moment before she managed to choke out “ _What?_ ” Hadn’t he said he’d grown up in the system, just like he had? That _was_ what he’d meant when he said that he wasn’t in touch with his family…

Wasn’t it?

“We don’t talk,” he said. “I’m sure you understand why.”

“Why the hell would I understand _that_?” she said sharply. “You have a _mother._ Who’s _alive._ How could you _not_ want to talk to her?”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “You told me that you didn’t talk to your parents, either.”

“Yeah, because I don’t know who my parents _are_. I don’t even know if they’re _alive._ They just abandoned me on the street when I was five. I didn’t even know my actual birthday until I was sixteen and _these_ —” She pointed at her collarbone “—showed up on my skin. Ben, your mother is a fucking _hero._ Mine was a fucking _junkie._ ”

“Yeah, she’s a real hero,” he said bitterly. “Such a hero that she didn’t have time for her own son. And my father? He was even worse. He wasn’t even _there_ half the time. I had to raise myself because neither of my parents was there to do it for me.”

“How could you _say_ that?” Rey yelled. “You had parents who loved you and clothed you and fed you. I had to literally _fight_ to eat in some of my foster homes. You have _no idea_ what that’s like.”

“And _you_ have no idea what it’s like to grow up with a heavy legacy and no support for it!” he said.

“Cry me a _fucking_ river, Ben,” she snarled.

“You want to know why I don’t talk to them?” he said. “Because I grew up _constantly_ being told by my friends, my teachers, hell, the _media_ that my mother was a _hero_. She was _such_ a good person. Except that she wasn’t good to me because she was never around. I never fit in when I was growing up. Yeah, I was a good student. But I got into a lot of fights, especially once these fucking words—” He pointed to his knee “—showed up on my fucking skin. I was mentally ill, and no one was around to give a shit. Instead of getting help, I just got punished for ‘causing trouble’ and ‘making my family look bad.’ When your parents are heroes and when they’re not good to you, you know what that means?”

Her breath hitched. The way the volume of his voice dropped when he asked that question was scarier than he way he’d been yelling. 

“It means you’re a monster,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Rey was caught between anger and something that tugged at the memory of Ben whispering _you’re not alone_ to her. But… “You can’t take responsibility for your own mistakes?” she accused.

“I didn’t _know_ any better. The only way I could get her attention was by getting in trouble. And then when I decided to go to law school she sent me off to live with my uncle so that I could intern for him. Except then I overheard him on the phone one day, saying that I was never going to make it and I was too ‘unhinged’ to be an attorney. He was trying to get me kicked out of law school because he was afraid that I was going to end up like my grandfather.”

“So _prove him wrong_ by quitting your job at First Order Properties!”

“What’s the point?” he said bitterly. “They’ve already decided that I’m irredeemable.”

“Oh, fuck you, Ben Solo,” she spat. “Yeah, what your uncle did was fucked-up, I’ll give you that. But don’t you _dare_ act like you aren’t in charge of your own actions. _You have the power to make things better._ So quit your fucking job, because it makes you fucking miserable anyway, and come do something good for once in your _fucking_ life." 

Rey knew that being quick to anger was a pretty big fault of hers. Being quick to anger usually went hand-in-hand with saying the _wrong fucking thing._ And the look in Ben’s eyes immediately told her that she’d said _the wrong fucking thing_ in a big way.

“Get out,” he said quietly.

“Ben,” she breathed.

“Get the fuck out of my apartment. I don’t want you here anymore.”

“It’s not too late to change.”

“You’re an idiot if you actually believe that. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like. You _can’t_. You’re _lucky_ for not having parents. At least you don’t have their legacy following you around for your entire life.”

Rey felt a tightness in her throat as tears pricked at her eyes. “How _dare_ you,” she said. She could forgive him for making mistakes when he was younger. Hell, she could maybe even forgive him for not talking to his family for a decade because of a fight, even if he wasn’t ready to apologize.

But she couldn’t forgive him for telling her she was lucky to grow up the way she had.

“Don’t call me,” she said. “Don’t text me. Delete my number. I never want to see you again. You _corporate bag of dicks._ ”

“That feeling is mutual, _stupid hippie bitch,_ ” he snarled as he slammed the door behind her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, here comes the angst and obligatory canon references. I don't want to get into heavy angst territory, but something has to happen with these two. And you didn't think that Snoke was going to completely disappear, did you?
> 
> Today’s soulmates AU worldbuilding question: in a world where soulmarks magically appear on one’s skin, how taboo are tattoos?


	10. So much for “company loyalty”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben fucked up. Rey fucked up. And Leia is in town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, that last chapter hurt, but the drama's not over yet. This is an "earn your happy ending" story :)
> 
> Along the same lines, new moodboard courtesy of guibass on tumblr! We're moving into a different kind of drama with Rey and Ben here. New mood, new moodboard.  
>  

Meeting the big-name politician who was officially endorsing her company should have been cause for celebration, but it just made Rey feel uncomfortable. ( _Sad, Rey. You’re sad. Admit it._ )

It had been a month since her fight with Ben. A month since she’d gone home and sobbed so hard she was worried about dehydration. A month since she’d been forced to deal with the trauma of having her past thrown in her face...as well as the trauma and confusion of ending whatever she’d had with Ben.

“Are you ready to meet the senator?” Poe said, knocking Rey out of her dazed staring at the computer screen. “Come on, we’re all about to leave to go get lunch with her.”

Right. Meeting Leia Organa. Who was not just some politician, she was her so-called soulmate’s mother.

_Not a big deal at all. No way. I’m fine._

“You know me and my social anxiety,” she said as lightly as she could manage. Hopefully, Poe would write off her hesitation and not question it too hard.

Rose was not as easy to dissuade, though. When Rey had called in sick the day after her fight with Ben, Rose had showed up with chicken noodle soup and immediately picked up on the fact that it wasn’t a normal sick day. Rey had told her half of the truth—she’d been hit pretty hard by her mental health, because some days were more difficult than others—but she was pretty sure that Rose knew there was more to the story than that.

“ _I_ know you and your social anxiety,” Rose said, pulling Rey aside. “And this isn’t it. What’s really going on?”

Rey really didn’t want to bring Rose into it. It wasn’t fair to her. But… “It’s a long story,” she said.

“I always have time for your long stories,” Rose said, giving her a soft smile. “I’m always here for you.”

It was those words that broke Rey. _I’m always here for you._ She was so tired of being alone, and she was so full of confusing feelings and she just needed some help figuring out what the fuck was going on.

Rose whisked her into an empty conference room and shot Poe a quick text to say that she and Rey would be there later. “Leia Organa is Ben Solo’s mother,” Rey said as soon as she could manage to talk through her sobs. 

“Oh, shit,” Rose said. “Seriously?” She paused before asking, “How do you know this?”

“Ben told me.”

“Is this why you took that sick day a few weeks ago? You guys had a fight?” When Rey blinked at her, Rose added, “I’m not an idiot. I know you two were together, even if you didn’t want to talk about it. I figured it was best to give you space while you guys figured it out.”

“No, I’m not mad about _that_ ,” Rey said. “It’s over. It was never really anything to begin with. Just sex.”

“Right,” Rose said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

Rey didn’t have the energy to fight her on it. “It was about family. _I_ thought we didn’t talk about our families because we both grew up in the system, and neither of us wanted to relive that. _He_ thought it was because I just didn’t get along with my parents because he doesn’t get along with his.” And then the next words tumbled out, like she’d been holding them in but hadn’t realized it. “I just don’t get why he doesn’t talk to her, if she’s, you know, _Leia Organa._ I don’t understand how he could possibly hate her and why he won’t just get over it and quit his job. He hates it, you know that? But it’s like he refuses to quit, for whatever stupid reason. He thinks he’s destined to be a villain and he won’t just give it a chance and try to change things. And then he _threw_ my past in my face, telling me that I was lucky to grow up the way that I did. He has _no idea_ what it was like for me growing up, and I just…” She trailed off. “I don’t know why it hurts so much.” 

Rose didn’t say anything, although Rey was pretty sure she was holding something back. “Is that why you don’t want to meet Senator Organa?” she asked after a few minutes.

“What am I supposed to say to her? ‘Hi, you know that son you don’t talk to? Turns out I’m his soulmate and we hate each other. Thanks for supporting Concrete Resistance.’”

“Maybe not those exact words, no. But I think you should talk to her. If nothing else, than to let her know that there’s a conflict of interest for you.”

“ _Everything_ with me and Ben Solo is a conflict of interest. The universe really hates us.”

Rose let out a soft laugh. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Rey glared at her. “Look, if you really need me to, I’ll tell everyone you had to leave because you’re sick. But you should talk to Senator Organa at some point while she’s in town.”

 

* * *

 

If Finn noticed the change in Ben’s demeanor, he hadn’t said anything. Not that he was walking around on eggshells, exactly, but he’d stopped making comments about Rey. And even though he denied he was doing so, he was trying to help Ben with research that would keep him as far away from Concrete Resistance as possible. 

Snoke was another story, however. He’d slapped Ben when he failed to bring Rey in. Fucking _slapped_ him. And not that Snoke had ever really been a great boss, but what the fuck? Who _did_ that? Ben was pretty sure he heard Hux snickering out in the hallway, but he was too busy feeling angry and exhausted and something that he was pretty sure was grief to pay much attention to what was going on around him.

Ben knew he was on thin ice, but he wasn’t sure if Snoke would ever really let him go without destroying the rest of his life.

He and Finn were buried in paperwork and research on a project (that, if he was being honest, he’d only picked up to keep him too busy to think about Rey because it was only tangentially related to legal matters) one afternoon when Finn’s phone went off, startling them both. “Sorry, is it okay if I take this?” he asked Ben.

“Fine, whatever,” Ben said gruffly, turning his attention back to the computer screen. He wasn’t paying any attention to Finn until he heard the words _Senator Organa_. His eyes snapped up to Finn, all research forgotten.

“Are you serious? Yes. _Yes._ I’d love to. I can be there in half an hour. Kaydel, I love you so much for getting me this meeting. I’ll see you soon.” He hung up the phone then looked at Ben. “Listen, is it okay if—why do you have that look on your face?”

“Senator Organa is in town?” Ben said, struggling to keep a neutral tone.

“Yeah,” Finn said. “You heard that she’s getting involved with Concrete Resistance, right?”

“I heard.”

“From Rey?”

Ben shot him a look that was meant to be a glare but was probably more like panic, given the way his heart started to race. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Sure you don’t,” Finn said. “Anyway, she’s looking for a new PR staffer, and Kaydel passed on my resume, and she said she wanted to meet me.”

“Oh.” He knew that Finn had been looking for a new job for months. It wasn’t like he’d hid any of his job hunting efforts from him. But Ben had never actually thought about the fact that Finn getting a new job meant that he’d actually _leave_.

Oh shit. When had he started to think of Finn as a friend?

“Hey,” Finn said. “You _know_ that I’m trying to leave this company. Why are you giving me that look?”

“What look? I’m not giving you a look,” Ben said quickly. “Get the fuck out of my office and go get dinner with my—” _My mother,_ he barely stopped himself from saying. Shit. He hated thinking of her like that.

Finn misinterpreted and said, “Rey’s not going to be there. Kaydel said it was just her and Poe joining us.”

Oh. Fuck. That was the other part of this that was alarming. Rey was going to meet his _mother._ And after that fight they’d had, who knew what Rey was going to say to her? _Probably confirmation of how much of a monster I am,_ Ben thought.

Yeah, he’d fucked up that night. But then again, so had she. _Do something good for once in your fucking life._ Given the amount of time he spent thinking about how his life was one big series of fuck-ups, that cut right to the bone, and he wasn’t sure he could get over it like he could the other insults they usually hurled at each other.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Ben muttered. “If she asks you about working here, please don’t say you know me.”

“Why not?” Finn’s tone said that he already had a pretty good idea of what the answer was going to be.

_Finn’s a friend. Friends tell each other the truth, right? That’s how it works. I think._ “She’s my mother.” Before Finn could respond, he added, “I am telling you this _in confidence._ Do _not_ tell anyone else about this. It’s not common knowledge, and I would like to keep it that way.”

“Rey knows, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He still hadn’t quite figured out _why_ that fight was bothering him so much. It shouldn’t have affected him so strongly. He and Rey hated each other. He should have been _happy_ that they were finally getting the fuck out of each others’ lives. Yeah, it was kind of a bummer that he wasn’t getting laid anymore. But he was used to not getting laid, so that couldn’t be it. Could it?

Finn sighed. “I won’t say anything to her,” he said. “But I’m not going to digging for details about Rey. You hear me?”

“I wasn’t going to ask.” _That’s a lie; you’re desperate to know how Rey is doing. You fucking_ idiot _._

 

* * *

 

“Rey Jakkusen?”

She jumped at the sound of an unfamiliar voice from behind her. She’d been so wrapped up in code that she hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on around her. She turned her chair around to see a short woman with greying hair pinned up into an elaborate braid standing behind her. “S-senator Organa,” Rey stammered. 

“Will you join me for lunch? Your friend Rose suggested that you and I have some things to discuss.”

Rey’s eyes widened, but she nodded silently. _You knew this was coming,_ she told herself, but that didn’t stop the anxiety from roiling in her stomach. _This is going to be the most awkward lunch in my entire life._

_Well, maybe not. That first not-date with Ben was pretty bad._

_Shit._ Thinking about Ben was not helping.

Leia had the kind of charisma that put Rey more at ease as she asked her questions about her work. _How long have you been with Concrete Resistance? Why did you get involved in the first place? What made you decide to study computer engineering in university?_ The way she was asking the questions almost made Rey think that maybe this was purely professional. Almost. She carried on with the questions until they were seated at a booth tucked back in the corner of a diner near the office and then said, “So. A corporate bag of dicks, huh?”

Rey felt her face heat up. “How—”

“My son’s soulmarks were memorable, to say the least,” Leia said dryly. “His sixteenth birthday was not a proud moment for the Organa-Solo family.” Rey gaped at her. When she didn’t respond, Leia added, “Can I ask what yours say?”

That was something Rey could talk about. “‘Go to hell, you stupid hippie bitch,’” she said. She wasn’t sure what response she was expecting, but it wasn’t a sad, resigned sigh.

“I tried to teach him better manners than that,” Leia said. “Rose didn’t tell me much, but she did tell me that you and Ben know each other.”

“Not that well,” Rey said quickly, fighting the blush that was coloring her cheeks. There was _no_ way she could tell this woman, this _senator_ , exactly how well she knew her son. “We don’t really get along.”

“Unfortunately, I think he learned that from me and his father,” Leia said. “We weren’t exactly the best role models.”

That surprised Rey. Based on the way Ben had spoken about them, he’d made it seem like they didn’t think they’d done anything wrong. “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Rey said. “I grew up in foster care.”

“I’m sorry,” Leia said. She sounded like she actually _meant_ it, too. Which wasn’t helping with all of the conflicting feelings Rey had about the whole situation.

“Look, Senator—”

“Leia.”

“Sorry?”

“I think we’re on a first-name basis, Rey. After all, you’re almost family, in a way.”

_Family. She said family. But…_ “Leia,” Rey said, the name feeling weird on her tongue. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Ben and I aren’t anything _remotely_ like that. I don’t think we ever will be.” _He hates you, and me, and I don’t know what I want to do about it._

“We—me, his father, and my brother—made mistakes with Ben,” Leia said. “I’d like to think it’s not too late for things to change between us.”

_She said family._ Rey was willing to do almost anything to be a part of a family of heroes, but… “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t help you with that. He doesn’t listen to me, and I can’t talk to him about families. He’s such an ass—” She cut herself off. _I can’t insult this woman’s_ son, she thought. _Even if it_ is _true._

To her surprise, Leia gave her a wry smile. “An asshole?” she said. “Yeah, that’s what I thought about his father when we first met, too.”

“He made it sound like you guys don’t have a good relationship,” Rey said. “Not that we’ve talked much, I mean. We mostly fight. Only fight, really.”

“Han and I are both the type of person who work better with a little distance. Ben has always tried to pretend he’s like that, but he’s not. I think some of that is the result of the way we raised him."

_She really cares for him, even after everything. And that asshole has no idea._ “I’m not going to pretend I don’t know why you’re telling me this,” Rey said. “But I don’t know what you expect me to do with this information.”

“Curiosity, I guess,” Leia said with a smile. “I’ve always wanted to meet the person who would one day call my son a ‘corporate bag of dicks.’”

 

* * *

 

Ben shouldn’t have been surprised when Finn marched into his office a few days later wearing casual clothes that were definitely _not_ a part of the First Order Properties dress code. “You know, telling Phasma that I quit was more satisfying than I thought it was going to be,” he said. 

“Senator Organa offered you the job, I take it?” _Don’t panic, don’t panic, it’s fine, you’re not losing your only friend, don’t panic—_

“She did,” Finn said with a grin. “It does involve some travel, but she’s comfortable with me working remotely from here most of the time. And since she’s getting involved in Concrete Resistance stuff, she’ll be in town often, anyway.”

“Oh,” Ben said. “That’s great. Congratulations.” _Don’t panic, don’t panic, it’s not like you’re not used to this anyway, don’t panic—_

“I’m not going to ask about your relationship with her, and I didn’t tell her anything about you, I promise,” Finn said. “But this is a big deal for me. I can’t say no.”

“Of course,” Ben said faintly.

Finn gave him a wry smile. “You know, it says a lot that a few months ago you would have had my head for saying that,” he said.

“A few months ago, you wouldn’t have known why that’s such a sore point for me.”

“A few months ago, you would’ve called me FN-2187.”

“And a few months ago, _you_ thought I was fucking terrifying.”

“Oh don’t get me wrong, I still think you’re fucking terrifying,” Finn said, but the words had no heat behind them. “If I ever end up in a legal battle, I want you on my side.”

“Does that mean this isn’t goodbye?” The words slipped out before Ben realized what he was saying. _No, wait, I’m not that needy, am I?_

Finn’s expression shifted to something a little softer. “You have my number,” he said. “Just as long as you never use it to make me play carrier pigeon again.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t want to talk to her,” Ben muttered, feeling his face heat up.

“‘Her’ as in the senator, or ‘her’ as in Rey?”

“Both.”

Finn didn’t say anything for a minute. “I’m not asking what the story is there,” he said slowly. “But I do know it has something to do with this company. I don’t think you should do anything _just_ for the purpose of winning Rey back, or whatever. But I do think you should think long and hard about why you’re still here and if this is really what you want out of life.”

“What else would I even do? You said it yourself. I’m fucking terrifying. No one wants to hire me.” He muttered the words, oddly paranoid that Hux was going to pop out of somewhere and report back to Snoke about Ben’s lack of company loyalty.

“I can’t tell you that,” Finn said. “I’m not your therapist. Just your friend.”

Despite everything—Snoke, Hux, Rey, his mother—Ben couldn’t hold back a smile. “We’re friends?” he asked hopefully.

“Yeah, you idiot. Why else do you think I stopped by before I threw my employee badge down the trash compactor?”

 

* * *

 

Somehow, life went on.

Leia didn’t stay in town for long—she had work to do back in DC—but she was in and out more often, especially as she got more and more involved with Concrete Resistance. And Finn had started working for her in her local office, which was perfect for Rose, Poe, and Kaydel. He was free of First Order Properties, and the few times that Rey had seen him when she’d gone out for post-work drinks, she had never seen him look so relaxed.

The other good part of Finn’s new job was that it means that he’d stopped working with Ben Solo. Not that Rey _cared_ , and not that she’d _said_ anything to Finn about it, but it was one less link that she had to her so-called soulmate. Which meant that it was one less thing that would cause her to run into him. And thank the stars that Finn hadn’t said anything to her about Ben, because Rey really didn’t want to know what he was up to or how he was doing these days. (Sometimes she hoped that he was as miserable as she was, but that also meant acknowledging exactly _why_ she was so miserable about it.)

But then Leia was back in town a couple of weeks later and she took Rey out for lunch again, and Rey started to realize that maybe she’d never truly be able to unlink herself from him again. Fortunately, Leia didn’t mention Ben after that first lunch; she instead focused on getting to know Rey. Which was really nice, because Rey had never had much in the way of parental figures, and despite her feelings (or her non-feelings) for Ben, she couldn’t help but think _family, she said family_ every time Leia asked how she was doing.

Rose wasn’t fooled, though. “Why do you have a set schedule for which mornings you want to stop at Kanata Brews?” she asked one day.

“What are you talking about?” Rey asked, trying to sound as innocent and confused as possible. She wasn’t willing to totally concede on the coffee shop thing, but she was willing to keep avoiding it on the days that they’d agreed that Ben could go there. “I don’t have a set schedule. I just don’t feel the need to stop in there every morning. I’m branching out with my coffee shops. You know how it is.”

She could tell that Rose didn’t want to drop the subject they were dancing around, but she did switch tactics. “So I hear that you got lunch with Senator Organa last week when she was in town?”

“She’s nice,” Rey said, refusing to acknowledge _why_ she and Leia got lunch. “She likes talking about the work that we’re doing, and even though I know nothing about US politics, she’s really interesting to talk to. She’s so passionate about the work that she does. It’s inspiring, really.”

“Finn’s really happy working there,” Rose said. “I couldn’t believe that he was finally able to leave First Order Properties when he told me about the job offer. I’m pretty sure their headquarters are directly over a hellgate.”

“You mean, that company is run by demons? That explains a lot.”

“I don’t think that _everyone_ there is a demon,” Rose said, giving Rey a _look._

Rey sighed. “I don’t want to talk about him, Rose,” she said quietly.

“Why not?” Rose asked. “You’re clearly miserable and you’ve _been_ miserable ever since you guys broke up.”

“We didn’t break up,” Rey said quickly. “We were never together.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “You were definitely together, even though you try to pretend otherwise. I’d never seen you look so happy as you did when you two were...whatever you were.”

_Ouch._ “If I looked happy, it was just that I was getting laid on the regular,” she said. “Because that’s _all_ it was.” _Just sex. Nothing else._

“You should talk to him,” Rose said quietly. “Whether you admit it or not, you’re miserable because what you were doing was more than just sex. Rey, the universe has deemed that you two are _meant_ to be together. You can’t just let him go.”

“The universe hasn’t deemed shit,” Rey said. “And anyway, even if I wanted to talk to him, I can’t. I deleted his number.”

“Wow, you deleted the only way to get in touch with someone,” Rose deadpanned. “It’s not like you don’t know where he lives, or anything.”

“I’m _not_ going to just randomly show up at my ex’s—”

Rose smiled at Rey’s slight slip. “Tell me you don’t want to talk to him ever again.”

Rey sighed. “Even if I do, he made it pretty damn clear that he never wants to see me again last time I saw him,” she said. Rose’s expression said that she knew something that she didn’t. Rey refused to ask what. “So, how goes the research into a partnership with that school outreach program?” she said instead, praying that Rose would get the hint. _Conversation. Over._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: State senators in the US often have offices in multiple towns/cities in the districts they represent, so Leia hasn’t magically moved her entire staff to this unnamed US city in an unnamed US state just because of her involvement in Concrete Resistance. She’s just getting more involved in something happening in this part of her district.
> 
> If you're sitting there going "wait, are Rey and Ben ever going to talk again??" the answer is...well, this is chapter 10 out of 15. It's not over yet :)
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: do you think that people have ever gone to war over soulmate issues? Think [Helen of Troy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_of_Troy).


	11. So much for “making a change for the better”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben hunts Rey down at their favorite coffee shop, and then he asks for her help. Surprisingly, she agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few of things before we get started: one, I know how frustrating it is when an author disappears randomly. I needed a week or so off from the internet because of mental health stuff. I'm not guaranteeing that won't happen again, but please be assured that I have absolutely no intention of abandoning this story. I'm too attached to it to let it go :)
> 
> Second thing, because I want to make this clear: **Ben and Rey do not have a healthy relationship at this point.** Nor is it meant to be portrayed as such. That's not to say that it's intentionally unhealthy on their parts, they just both have a lot of issues they need to work through on their own. Projecting their issues onto each other is one of those things.
> 
> Third thing: **Ben and Rey are unreliable narrators.** Neither of them has all of the facts and, like I said above, they project their issues onto each other. That's a large part of why their relationship is so unhealthy.
> 
> Fourth thing (and spoiler alert): They will eventually get there! There's a reason that I've made it a point to drop in comments that they both see a therapist, and that's because they both have a lot of trauma that they recognize they need professional help for (even if they haven't quite figured out how to break some of their patterns yet). This is something I take very seriously, both as someone who works in the field and someone who regularly sees a therapist for their own issues. Neither of them will apologize for their trauma, although they may apologize for their harmful actions or reactions that arise due to their trauma. _Nobody_ should ever be forced to apologize for their trauma. If you have any comments or concerns about how I'm handling this, feel free to contact me on tumblr. I leave anon turned on for my ask box.

Ben had thought that things at work couldn’t get much worse before Finn quit. He had been wrong. 

No matter how much time and energy he poured into his other projects, they all seemed to come down to “screaming at incompetent attorneys in other First Order Properties offices.” It had occurred to him at some point that everyone was right, he _was_ miserable. Yeah, he was making stupid amounts of money and yeah, his career looked successful on paper, but what was the point? He was so miserable and so afraid of running into Rey that he’d taken to having his groceries delivered on the rare occasions when he was home. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t do anything that was good enough for Snoke. (Seriously, what kind of boss _slapped_ an employee?)

And yeah, true to his word, Finn sometimes came out and met him for coffee (which, Ben still couldn’t believe that he’d actually become a _friend_ ). But it was always kind of awkward because so much of what he was doing these days was his new job, which was an off-limits topic, and Concrete Resistance, which was also an off-limits topic.

The tipping point of the whole thing was one Thursday a few weeks after Finn quit, when Hux poked his head into Ben’s office to say “Check your text messages.”

Ben raised an eyebrow at him, but dug his phone out of his pocket.

_From: Billy Snoke  
_ _Check your email._  

“Snoke sent you to tell me to check a text message that said to check my email?”

“Just check it, Solo,” Hux said, sounding far more annoyed than he had any right to be.

_From: billy.snoke@firstorder.com  
_ _Call me._  

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.

Hux just shrugged. “Just doing what the boss told me to do,” he said. “Which was get your attention, because you’re obviously not paying close enough attention to your text messages or your emails.”

“Did it ever occur to either of you that I’m busy?” Ben growled.

“Are you really going to say no to the boss?”

_For fuck’s sake._ “Did he tell you to watch me pick up the phone and call him, too?” Ben said. He knew he could easily walk down the hall and just bust into Snoke’s office, but if Snoke and Hux were going to be this petty, then Ben could, too.

“Just do what the boss tells you to do,” Hux snapped before turning and walking away. “Or else.”

_Why the_ fuck _is everyone at this company so annoying?_ he wondered as he dialed Snoke’s extension.

The phone rang three times before Snoke picked up. “Solo,” he said in his best ‘deceptively placid’ tone. “So nice of you to finally make time for me.”

“I’ve been busy, sir,” Ben said, trying to keep from growling.

“Come to my office,” Snoke said. “Immediately.”

So Snoke had told Hux to go to Ben’s office to tell him to check his text messages, only to have a text message that said to check his email, only to have an email that said to call Snoke, only to be told to walk down the damn hall to his office. _Why do I put up with this?_

“I am concerned by your lack of progress,” Snoke said by way of greeting a minute later (because _yeah_ , it took longer to be _told_ to go to Snoke’s office than to actually _walk_ there.)

“What’s to be concerned about?” Ben said, hands already clenched into fists.

“You had such potential when I hired you, Solo,” he said. “I’ve built up your entire career so that you could _succeed_ in a way that no other person would have been able to. And what do I get for it? A lazy employee who isn’t completely dedicated to this company.”

“I’ve been busy,” Ben repeated, fighting to keep his voice steady. “I’ve been working 80-hour weeks trying to manage all of my responsibilities and projects.”

“Not on the projects _I_ want you to focus on.”

“I’ve said many times,” Ben said. “I’m an attorney, not a business manager. And Concrete Resistance _isn’t_ a competitor, nor are they worth continuing to investigate. They’re a start-up. They’ll fail on their own.”

“And I’ve told _you_ many times, your job is to do whatever I tell you to do,” Snoke snapped. “Finish the job, Solo. Or else I will _destroy_ you and your career. Don’t think I can’t do it. I know things about you that you don’t want me telling _anybody._ ”

Over the years, Snoke had repeatedly emphasized how Ben would be nothing without him, how he had created Ben Solo’s career as a powerful attorney. And over the years, his words had slid from “encouraging” to “disheartening.” But Ben had never felt so _threatened_ as he did in that moment.

He knew what he had to do.

“Yes, sir,” Ben said. “Are we done here?”

“You have forty-eight hours, Solo,” Snoke said. “I suggest you get started.”

 

* * *

 

The last thing Rey expected to see on her morning stop at Kanata Brews was Ben Solo lurking just inside the entrance, holding a large cold brew coffee. The fact that the ice was half-melted spoke to how long he’d been waiting for her, and her stupid heart sped up in a way that she didn’t like. 

“Hi,” she said, not sure of how else to respond. _What are you doing here?_ she wanted to ask. _You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t_ want _to be here, why are you looking at me like that?_

“Rey,” he said softly. “I bought you coffee,” he added when the silence started to get awkward.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the cup from him. “What are you—”

“I need your help.”

She didn’t know what she was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that. “With what?” she said, amazed that she was able to keep her voice as steady as she did. _Thank the stars I already have a therapy appointment this afternoon._ She hadn’t really expected to see Ben Solo again, and now that he was standing in front of her, there were a lot of weird, uncomfortable emotions squirming around in her gut.

“Can we go somewhere to talk?” he asked. “Somewhere more private?”

“It’s a nice day out,” Rey said. “I was going to cut through Silver Garden Park on my way to work. You’re welcome to join me.”

His eyes widened. Rey wondered if he had been expecting her to say no. “Silver Garden Park. Yes. That’s good.”

He followed her out of the coffee shop and onto the sidewalk in silence. Neither of them spoke until they were past the entrance gates to the park. Rey had been lying when she said she’d planned on cutting through the park—it was actually out of her way—but if he wanted to talk, they weren’t going to do it in the middle of Kanata Brews.

Although… “Look,” she finally said. “We both said some pretty shitty things the last time we saw each other.”

“We did,” he said slowly.

“Some of them were out of line,” she added. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to tell you what to do with your life. I don’t get to make that decision for you. And anyway, I have no right to do that. It’s your life. I don’t have any place in it.”

Was it just her imagination, or did his shoulders relax a fraction at her apology? “And I shouldn’t have said you were...you know, lucky to not have a family,” he said. “Even if I do hate mine.” Rey debated telling him that she and Leia had become lunch buddies, but this probably wasn’t the time or the place. “But you were right,” he continued. “Not about my family. About my job. I’m miserable, and I hate the type of person I’ve become working there.”

“So quit.”

“That’s actually why I need your help,” he said.

How was she supposed to help him quit? “Ben, I can’t tell your boss that you’re quitting.”

“I don’t need you to,” he said. “Look, you’re a programmer. Can you hack into a company network?”

She stopped suddenly. “Just because I’m a programmer doesn’t mean I can hack,” she said.

“But can you do it?”

Rey had never _really_ tried to hack a computer network. She’d tried to poke holes in Concrete Resistance’s computer security, but that was only so that she could make sure they were protected. But she _had_ taken that university course on ethical hacking… “Why do you need me to hack into your company network?” she asked. _This counts as ethical hacking, doesn’t it?_

His expression relaxed into something that was almost a smile, but not quite. Rey didn’t like the things it did to her stomach. “I need you to find out what my boss has on me that he can use to, and I quote, ‘destroy me and my career’ so that I can see what I’m up against when I finally tell him to go to hell.”

She gaped. “Seriously?”

“Seriously as in ‘do I need you to hack into something’ or seriously as in ‘did my boss actually say that to me’?”

“Both.”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “Seriously.”

 

* * *

 

Ben hadn’t really been expecting Rey to say yes, but he still found himself camping out at Kanata Brews on one of _her_ days, hoping that she would show up anyway. 

He hadn’t completely forgiven her for what she’d said during their fight. It hurt, especially coming from someone who (he realized too late) he thought could actually understand him in a way that no one else did. But it wasn’t like he hadn’t insulted her as well, and anyway, he really _did_ need her help. He had nothing in his own files that would suggest that Snoke had leverage on him, nor did he have any idea what that leverage could possibly _be._ Maybe something to do with the fight he’d had with his family, but...that was a long time ago, and that stuff all happened before he’d started his internship with First Order Properties, anyway.

(That falling out was also something he should probably discuss with Rey. Maybe if he told her the full story, she’d understand better. Or maybe she wouldn’t, and they’d be back to square one. But that was a conversation for another time. Assuming there _was_ another time.)

“I thought you’d need to be, like, in the actual office in order to hack into the company network,” he said as he hovered over her shoulder. They were in his apartment, his work laptop and various papers and folders sprawled over his kitchen table.

“Hacking doesn’t actually look like it does in the movies,” Rey said as she opened up a series of folders that Ben hadn’t even known existed on the computer. “Now shut up and let me work.”

“You tell me to shut up a lot,” he said. _Usually in the context of sex_. He’d have been lying if he’d said that a small part of him wasn’t hoping that the day wouldn’t end there. But realistically, that option was so far off the table that it was buried six feet underground.

“That’s because you talk to much,” she said, but the words had no heat behind them. “I’m doing you a favor, remember?”

“This benefits you as well, you know,” he said. Watching her work was oddly fascinating. Ben didn’t really care about how computers worked, but watching Rey’s fingers fly over the keyboard as she entered commands and opened programs that he didn’t recognize made him wonder if there was any benefit to learning how to do some of this himself. If Hux thought that what Ben did was ‘lawyer magic,’ then what Rey was doing was ‘computer magic.’

Also, the sight of her fingers _moving_ like that was...distracting.

“I don’t see how,” she said. “Your life doesn’t impact mine.”

Ben was surprised by how much those words hurt. She was right. They had no part in each other's lives. Just the stupid marks that didn’t mean anything. So why did that statement feel wrong?

Instead of answering, he turned to go through some of the files laying on the table. They probably weren’t of any use to Rey, but it was everything that he’d thought to bring home from the office. Besides, he didn’t want to distract her. There was a pretty strict timeline on this, and she had taken time off from work to help him out.

Of course, the fact that he’d texted Finn _Is there any chance you know something about First Order Properties that I don’t? I’m trying to get leverage on them_ probably had made its way to the higher-ups at Concrete Resistance, so Rey’s bosses were probably more than happy to let her take time off to do this.

She let off a string of curse words, catching Ben’s attention. He would have laughed at the sight her her glaring daggers at a computer screen if he hadn’t been so desperate for her help. “You said you wanted me to look for files on Billy Snoke’s account, right?” she said.

“And Armitage Hux. He’s even more in Snoke’s pocket than I am.”

“Armitage Hux, I can find. Billy Snoke, not so much. It’s like he doesn’t even exist.”

Ben rolled his eyes. Of _course_ Snoke would be a shadowy figure in his own company. “Can you find anything in Hux’s files?”

“I’m looking,” she said. Ben didn’t respond, and only the sound of Rey’s fingers flying over the keyboard broke the silence until— “Oh, _shit._ ”

“What is it?” he said, rushing over to her. He assumed it was something important until she burst out laughing.

“You coworker keeps a porn stash on his work computer,” she said, “and it’s the most boring porn possible.”

“No way,” he said, looking over her shoulder. Except— “Holy shit, you’re right.” Not that Ben had ever thought about it— _gross_ —but he never would have pegged Hux (no pun intended) for being so vanilla. The guy was so straight-laced that Ben would have assumed that he was into some really kinky shit.

“I’m pretty sure I had kinker sexual fantasies before I even knew what kinks were,” Rey said through her laughter.

Now _that_ was an interesting statement. One that Ben was suddenly _very_ interested in. But before he could ask (which would have been a terrible idea, probably), she opened up a folder of photos that made him want to bleach his eyes out. “Who the fuck keeps their _nudes_ on their work computer?” he said.

“I don’t think this is the kind of leverage you were looking for,” said Rey, “but this is _gold_. Or ginger, rather.” She laughed at her own joke. It was strangely endearing, despite the reason for it.

“I’m going to vomit,” Ben said. “Please close this and let’s never mention it again.”

She kept laughing, but she closed the windows. “Unfortunately, I can’t find anything else incriminating from here. There’s a conspicuous absence of documents, though. The phrase ‘Project Nox’ comes up repeatedly, but there’s no documents associated to it. Does that sound familiar?”

Ben frowned. It didn’t, but… “Hux might not have files on his computer,” he said, “but he’ll have paper files in his office.” He’d suspected for a while that Hux was involved in some pretty shady dealings, but he’d never actually wanted to go to the effort of actually looking into that. It was much easier to turn a blind eye when he was drowning in his own misery.

“Do you think he’s there right now?” Rey asked.

“Are you suggesting we break into my coworker’s office and go through his stuff?”

“As an added bonus, if you get me into Snoke’s office, I might be able to hack into his computer. I assume he keeps stuff on there that he doesn’t want to keep on the company network. That might explain why there’s no trace of his files anywhere.”

That sounded like something shady that Snoke would do, as did the idea of Hux keeping his shady business dealings outside of the company computer network. “I’m not entirely unconvinced that Snoke doesn’t live in his office,” Ben said. “I’ve never seen him outside of it. Hux, on the other hand...I’m not sure.”

“So let’s go.”

Ben hesitated. He was desperate to get some answers, but Snoke’s creepy obsession with turning Rey away from Concrete Resistance—as well as his gross assessment that “women don’t belong in tech”—made him wonder if bringing Rey to the Concrete Resistance headquarters was a good idea. “You’re sure you can’t just get those files from here?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you want me in your office?” she said. “I thought that was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it? Get me away from my company and into yours?”

_Not like this,_ he wanted to say. _I don’t want that anymore._ He hadn’t wanted it for a while, now. “They’re probably still there,” he said, looking at the clock.

“It’s half past seven on a Friday,” she said.

“And they’re probably still there,” he said. “People tend to work long hours at First Order.”

She rolled her eyes. “No wonder you’re always in a bad mood,” she said.

“I am not always in a _bad mood_.”

“No,” she said, sounding a little resigned. “You’re not.” Before he could ask what exactly she meant by that, she added, “So what time do you think they’ll clear out?”

“Give it a few more hours,” he said.

“A _few_?”

“We can try around ten. Usually everyone’s gone by then.” He would know. He was one of the people who stayed that late half the time. Come to think of it, one of the benefits of having Rey around—aside from the mind-blowing sex—was that he’d stopped spending so many late nights at the office when he wasn’t traveling for work.

“That’s pretty late,” she said.

“What, do you have somewhere to be?” _So what if she does?_ he told himself. _You have no part in her life._

“No,” she said, meeting his eyes. Something about the look in her eyes—and the entire situation they were currently in—made his heart pound. “I told you I’d help you, and I’m _going_ to help you.”

There was some sort of tension in the air between them. Ben wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Sexual tension, maybe? But no, this was a one-time favor asked out of desperation, not a complete make up between them. But his heart was pounding and his thoughts were suddenly racing in all different directions, like the fact that they now had a couple of hours to kill and there were so many things they could do or talk about in those hours.

_Oh, fuck._ He realized suddenly that he didn’t want this to be the sort of thing where she helped him once and then walked out of his life for good. Yeah, he was still angry with her for that fight. But...shit, she just _got_ him in a way that most people didn’t. And he wasn’t quite ready to let that go.

“Ben?” she said quietly. “Are you okay?”

_Not the time or the place for that conversation,_ he told himself. After this. After he got out from under Snoke’s thumb. Then they could talk and...figure things out.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Great, actually.”

“You’re a terrible liar, you know.”

“I need to sneak you into enemy territory in a few hours. How do you _think_ I feel?”

She snorted. “Enemy territory, huh?”

 

* * *

 

Rey had no idea why Ben was being so weird about the idea of her going into the First Order Properties office with him, but it was too late to worry about it now that they were in the elevator up to the top floor, where he, Hux, Snoke, and Phasma had their offices. Never mind the fact that it was a complete 180 from the way he’d spoken to her months ago when they’d first met. But he’d been radiating a strange nervous energy ever since she’d told him that they should actually go into the offices, and it was putting her on edge. 

Besides, they were about as prepared as they could possibly get. In the hours between deciding to sneak her in and then actually leaving to go do so, he’d ordered dinner and they’d alternated between eating Chinese food take-out in awkward silence and poking through more of Hux’s files, trying to find more evidence of what Project Nox could possibly be. Which was probably the best use of that time, even though there was a part of Rey that kept saying _don’t look in the direction of his bedroom, don’t think about the time he fucked you over that kitchen counter, don’t think about that time you blew him on the couch, don’t think about—_ because her stupid hormone-ridden mind kept going to those places.

“The lights are off in their offices,” Ben said, breaking the awkward silence that had settled in the elevator. “We should be safe.”

“You said that already,” she said. His nervousness was starting to put her on edge as well. “Relax. It’s late. You have a right to be here.”

“And you don’t,” he said.

“Why does that bother you so much?”

“Because,” he said, looking down at the ground. “It just does.”

She rolled her eyes. _Real mature, Ben._ “Fine, don’t tell me,” she muttered. “Get me into Snoke’s office. If his computer is there, I’ll see what I can get from it. You look for the files in Hux’s office. You’ll have a better idea of what to look for than I will, anyway.”

He hesitated. “What?” Rey said flatly.

“I don’t want to just leave you alone in there,” he said.

“What, do you think he’s going to jump out from the shadows and attack me?” She meant it as a joke, but Ben said “I wouldn’t put it past him” without elaborating.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “Stand behind me uselessly while I attempt to hack into a computer. It’s not like this is all for your benefit, or anything.”

He sighed. “No, you’re right,” he said. “That’s a good plan. Scream if you need help.”

Five minutes later had her sitting at the desk of the CEO of First Order Properties, staring at the computer login screen.

Password hacking never looked like it did in the movies. Rey didn’t have any equipment meant for cracking passwords, nor did she know Snoke well enough to be able to guess what his password might be. But…

_Password: password1  
_ _Access Denied.  
_ _Password: Password1  
_ _Access Denied.  
_ _Password: Password1234  
_ _Access Granted. Welcome, Billy Snoke._  

Rey gaped at the computer. Was he really stupid enough to use ‘Password1234’ as his computer password?

Apparently, he was, because a second later, the computer desktop loaded...and all of his files were loaded and ready to be searched. Rey got to work running searches through his files on terms like _Ben Solo_ and _blackmail._ Not that she actually expected to find a folder titled ‘blackmail’ on Snoke’s computer, except—

_Folder: blackmail  
_ _SecretarialPool.doc  
_ _Accounting.doc  
_ _Sales.doc  
_ _Legal.doc  
_ _HR.doc_  

Rey opened up _Legal.doc_ , assuming that that referred to Ben’s department. But all it contained was a list of names and office locations, none of which were Ben’s. Maybe it would have meant something to him, but it was useless to Rey.

She kept searching, though, and there was _nothing_ there. No evidence of dirt that Snoke had on Ben. Not that she really knew what she was looking for. Ben hadn’t given her any clues as to what dirt Snoke could possibly have on him, instead insisting that “I have no idea how he plans to ruin my life, but if anyone can do it, it’s Billy Snoke.”

She opened ‘Legal.doc’ back up so that she could print it out, figuring that she may as well give Ben _something_ for her efforts, when she realized that someone was standing at the door. She and Ben had turned on as few lights as possible, but even in the low lighting, she could tell that whoever was standing there was a stranger.

“Ah, Rey Jakkusen,” an oily voice said as the stranger stepped into the office. “I’ve been waiting for my young apprentice to bring you to me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why is Snoke so set on destroying Concrete Resistance? He’s just an asshole. Rather than making Ben’s bad boss experience autobiographical, I used a couple of examples from [here](https://www.rd.com/advice/work-career/50-bad-bosses-youd-never-want-to-work-for/).
> 
> Also, I’m not trying to kinkshame anyone. You do you, as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult. The idea of Rey and Ben coming across a super vanilla porn stash on Hux’s work computer was too good to pass on.
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: what kind of rules (written or unwritten) do you think people have for awkward soulmate situations? For example, someone’s new boss turns out to be their soulmate, or there’s a significant age gap. (Note: Ben is eight years older than Rey in this fic, which isn't meant to be a significant age gap for them.)


	12. So much for “doing the right thing”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben does something stupid. Rey has some (okay, many) regrets. There’s a lot of TV-worthy drama.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, reading the comments about Snoke's computer password: "yeah...it's a trap...definitely not a [_Spaceballs_ reference](https://youtu.be/a6iW-8xPw3k)..." You guys give me too much credit.

Ben knew the _second_ something went wrong.

He didn’t know how he knew. He didn’t question it, either. There was just a sense of _danger, danger, go find Rey_ as alarm bells started ringing in his brain. He grabbed the stack of folders he was looking at, shoved them in his bag, and then ran for Snoke’s office just in time to hear him say, “I’ve been waiting for my young apprentice to bring you to me.”

_Rey, no, wait, I didn’t—_ “Took him long enough,” Snoke said. “I know he’s somewhere nearby. Solo? You can stop hiding now.”

_Quick. Think._ How was he going to play this? He needed to get Rey away from Snoke. But… “She came with me willingly” was all he could think to say as he stepped into the room. Based on both Snoke’s and Rey’s expressions, it was the exact wrong thing to say. _Of fucking course._

“I knew you’d place the interests of this company over your own,” Snoke said. “I’m proud of you, Solo.”

“You’re mistaken, sir,” Ben said. “I didn’t—”

“What the fuck, Ben?” Rey hissed. “Did you seriously set all this up just to _lure_ me in here?”

It was a fair question, given the circumstances. But Ben was too busy trying to figure out how to get Rey out of there to pay much attention to how she was interpreting the situation. “No,” he said, looking at her. “He had nothing to do with it. I’ve never lied to you, Rey.”

“Yes, you have,” she said. “Like earlier tonight, when you said—”

“Okay _yes_ , maybe I have lied, but not about anything big. Not about this.”

“What is _this_ , exactly?” Snoke asked.

“He’s trying to quit,” Rey said before Ben could say another word. “He hates you and he hates this company.” Ben felt his face heat up. She’d said that she wouldn’t tell his boss that he was quitting, but...well, she was probably thinking about as clearly as Ben was at the moment.

It wasn’t like she was wrong. Ben just didn’t like that she was speaking for him, even if she was defending him.

Snoke just laughed like she’d told a really funny joke. “Oh, this is rich,” he said. “I tell you to find that Concrete Resistance programmer and seduce her if you have to, only for you to fall into your own trap. What, she opened her legs and you immediately started doing her bidding?”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Ben snarled.

“You’re fucking _weak_ , Solo,” Snoke snapped. “You’re throwing _everything_ away just for a pretty pair of eyes.”

“Hey, I am _right here_ ,” Rey said.

“Hush, honey, men are talking,” Snoke said.

Ben stared. Had Snoke _really_ just said that?

“I don’t believe this,” Rey said, shoving herself away from the desk and standing up. “For fuck’s sake, Ben. I _refuse_ to be caught up in this fucking TV drama. This is fucking _ridiculous._ ”

“Rey, that’s not what this is,” he said desperately. “I—” He faltered, not sure of how to make the situation better.

“You what, Solo?” Snoke said. “Tell us.”

The patronizing tone in Snoke’s voice pulled Ben’s attention away from Rey. “I know what this company is doing,” he said, pulling one of the folders out of his bag. “I know what you and Hux have been up to. Project Nox?”

Snoke faltered for the first time since Ben had known him. Then—”And what do you plan on doing about it, Solo?” he sneered.

“Blackmailing you,” he said. “You have dirt on me, and now I have dirt on you. Give me control of the company and _get the fuck out_.”

There was a pause so tense that Ben could barely breathe. And then— “Fucking _hell_ , I am so fucking _done_ wasting my time on you,” Rey seethed as she pushed past him. “I can’t believe I fucking _helped_ you.”

“Wait, no, Rey,” Ben said, grabbing her arm. “Don’t go.”

“Why not?” she said. “You tell me you want out of this company, and now that you’ve found a way out, you want to _be in charge of it_? There really _is_ no hope for you.”

_Back to_ this _argument._ “I’m changing things,” he growled. “Snoke won’t control me anymore. I’ll be in control of the company.”

“You don’t get it,” Rey shouted, ripping her arm out of his grip. “That’s the whole _point_. He doesn’t have any dirt on you. He never had any to begin with. Isn’t that right, _Billy_?” she said, glaring at Snoke.

_No. That can’t be right. Because then everything would be a lie._ But the expression on Snoke’s face coupled with his lack of verbal response told Ben everything he needed to know:

Snoke had been bluffing the _entire fucking time._

“Goodbye, Ben,” Rey said after a moment. “Have a nice life.”

 

* * *

 

By some miracle, Rey made it down the elevator, out of the building, and two blocks down the street before bursting into tears. She tried to keep walking for the nearest bus station, but suddenly she was crying so hard that she had to stop and lean against the building. _New low._ She barely had the presence of mind to pull out her phone and call an Uber, then text Rose _Something happened. I need a friend_ while she tried to contain her tears.

 

Rose Tico  
  
**Rose:** Do I need to help you bury a body?  
  
**Rey:** Not yet.  
  
**Rose:**???  
  
**Rose:** I'm coming over  
  
**Rey:** Thank you.  
  


 

_Bless this driver for not asking questions,_ Rey thought as she got in car, tears still falling. Why was she crying so much?

It was just..she’d never felt so _betrayed._ Not when her mother walked away, leaving her on the street when she was five years old. Not when the foster care system had literally picked a name out of a hat instead of trying to figure out what her _actual_ last name was. Not even when the soulmarks had shown up a few months before her estimated birthday, washing out her last hope that there was _someone_ out there who wanted her around.

He’d _used_ her. He’d used their connection. And then he’d _abandoned_ her. Fucking _again._ And yeah, maybe it was a stupid connection, and neither of them actually _believed_ in it, but he’d gone and told his boss about it—his _boss_ , who had _actually_ said ‘hush, honey, men are talking’ to her—and then proceeded to use it for a fucking _business deal._

And the worst part was? She was pretty sure she was in love with him, because what other _idiotic_ reason would she have had to say, “yes, we had an awful fight, but I’ll still help you because I want to make things better for you”?

Rey was still in full meltdown mode when she finally got home and saw Rose standing outside her apartment door. “Hey,” Rose said softly, taking in her tear-streaked face. “You look like you need a hug.”

“I made a huge mistake, Rose,” Rey said.

“Do we _actually_ need to bury a body?”

Rey sighed. “No, not that kind of mistake.”

“Oh, phew. Yesterday was arm day at the gym, and I’m too sore to lift a shovel right now.”

The wonderful thing about Rose was that she could say something like that at a time like this and still manage to make Rey smile weakly through her tears. Of course, that was immediately followed by another round of crying, which resulted in Rose pulling Rey’s keys out of her hands and unlocking the door to let them into her tiny apartment so that Rey could continue having her breakdown in private.

Rose didn’t say anything for a while as she heated water up for tea while keeping a careful eye on Rey, who was still not quite ready to talk yet. Only after she had two mugs of peppermint tea did she sit down on the couch next to Rey and ask, “So what happened?”

“I’m an idiot,” Rey said as she took the mug from Rose.

“You’re not, and that’s not what I asked.”

Rey sighed. “I _am_ an idiot, because I’m pretty sure I’m in love with Ben, and he just told me that he was _using_ me for some convoluted work scheme after I agreed to help him hack into the First Order Properties company network so that I could help him get free.”

Rose tilted her head, but she didn’t say anything, like she knew that Rey wasn’t done speaking yet. “I know you’re sitting there going ‘I told you so’,” Rey added.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Rose said quietly.

It took Rey a moment to figure out what she wanted to say. “It’s just, I thought that maybe, _maybe_ , I’d found someone who wasn’t going to abandon me, who actually _got_ what it was like to feel like that. And yeah, we fight all the time and we have nothing in common and I don’t even know if I _actually_ love him or not, but if I don’t, why does this hurt so much?” She knew she was babbling, but now that she’d started, she couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. “I don’t think I was even all that angry with _him_ after that fight we had. I was angry at myself, and the universe, and the fact that everyone keeps abandoning me, and just when the guilt was starting to sink in, he found me this morning.” _Stars, was that only this morning?_ “And everything that’s happened today has just moved so fast and now I’m here and it’s over because he’d rather stay tied miserably to an evil organization than take a chance on something else with me.” She took a shaky breath, then added, “I was so wrong all those times I said it was just a sex thing. I don’t know when it stopped being that for me.”

“Rey, you know you guys are, like, destined—” Rose started to say, but Rey cut her off.

“No, that’s the thing. Destiny is bullshit. And even if it wasn’t, it still doesn’t change the fact that he just tried to sell me out to his fucking _boss_.”

Rose didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, so they sat in silence for a little while. Rey wasn’t really sure why she’d called Rose, and she was even less sure of why she was actually staying, considering it was now past two in the morning and she had someone (okay, three someones) waiting at home for her. But it was so nice to just have someone there with her. Not just someone, actually. A friend.

And maybe what she had with Rose wasn’t what she had—or wanted to have—with Ben. But that was okay, because Rose was her friend, and she wasn’t leaving her alone. So maybe… 

Maybe not everyone wanted to abandon her.

“What can I do to help you?” Rose said, finally breaking the silence.

“Help me?” Rey didn’t understand what she was asking.

“Would it help if we taped a photo of his face to a dartboard and threw darts at it? What if we egged his house? Oh, I know! We could post his phone number on Craigslist.” Rose had that look on her face, the expression she wore when she was trying to make Rey laugh. (Rey was startled to realize that she’d picked up on that specific expression that Rose wore sometimes.) “I’ve got tons of ideas. Pick one.”

The quick-to-anger reactive part of Rey that always seemed to get set off in Ben Solo’s presence just...wasn’t into it. Which was weird, and a little worrisome. She hated the idea that a part of her personality might be irrevocably changed by this split.

_Whatever, I’m probably just being overdramatic._

“I appreciate the offer, Rose,” she said. “Really. But I think right now? I just want to sleep.” Crying was exhausting.

“Do you want me to stay?” Rose said. “I’m happy to crash on the couch if you don’t want to be alone.”

Rey had been about to push herself off the couch, but Rose’s question made her pause. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, refusing to make eye contact with her friend. _Please don’t leave me alone I’m so sick of being alone._

“I know I don’t,” Rose said as she plucked Rey’s empty mug out of her hands and stood up. “But that’s what friends do. We don’t abandon each other when we don’t want to be alone.”

 

* * *

 

Victory felt empty.

Ben didn’t understand what was wrong. He had everything he’d ever wanted, didn’t he? He was finally in control at work. Snoke couldn’t manipulate him anymore, and what Ben knew about Project Nox was enough to keep him and Hux in check. He was _free_.

Right?

But late at night, in the days following his confrontation with Snoke, all sorts of thoughts crept in. _You know why you’re so miserable,_ they said. But Ben really _didn’t_ know. Okay, yeah, Rey probably had something to do with it. But that didn’t make any sense, because hadn’t he always wanted to avoid meeting her, anyway? So now that she was out of his life (for good), shouldn’t that have made things easier?

_Stop lying to yourself, you idiot._

“If I knew what I was lying to myself about, maybe I’d try,” he found himself muttering to the empty room around him at four in the morning one night about a week after the showdown in Snoke’s office.

Maybe it was about Project Nox. Ben hadn’t really been surprised by what he’d uncovered in those files, but it was still jarring to have written evidence that...well, okay, he probably should have started sniffing around ages ago for this. And it actually put him in an awkward situation, morally speaking. He didn’t think he could get disbarred for being ignorant of it, but if someone found out that Ben was actually aware of what was going on…

_Fuck it._ He wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight, and this was _really_ bothering him. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number, hoping that the person on the other end of the line wasn’t going to ignore his call.

“Ben? What the hell? It’s four in the morning.” Finn managed to sound sleepy and annoyed at the same time. “You’re lucky I’m sleeping alone tonight. You’re _especially_ lucky that Rose didn’t get woken up by your phone call. She asked me for your number so that she could put it on Craigslist just to fuck with you.”

Ben cringed. He didn’t know what version of the story Finn had heard, but it was probably—well, actually, any version of the story that Finn heard would be the bad one, because there was no good version of the story for anyone involved. “I know,” he said. “I’m going to assume by the lack of unsolicited dick pics that you didn’t give her my number.”

Finn snorted. “No, but I told her I’d give her your address so that she could go egg your house.”

“Joke’s on you. I live in an apartment.”

There was an awkward silence, then Finn said, “Seriously, what the fuck are you doing calling me at four in the morning?”

“I don’t know what to do,” Ben said. “And you’ve always been good at being brutally honest with me.”

“You’re asking me for advice? After what you did to Rey?”

Ben bit his lip, then let out a sigh. “This isn’t about Rey,” he said. “And anyway, she left me. She doesn’t want me around.”

“Okay,” Finn said slowly, like he was trying to piece together what Ben was trying to ask. “For the millionth time, I—”

“Won’t play messenger pigeon, I know. That’s not what I’m asking.”

When he didn’t elaborate, Finn said, “Okay, then. What are you asking?”

“What if, hypothetically speaking, someone—say, an attorney working at a massive property development company—found evidence of some really shady shit going on at said massive property development company, and instead of turning that evidence into the appropriate regulatory agencies, used that to blackmail the people running said massive property development company?”

Ben could almost hear the frown in Finn’s voice when he said, “What kind of shady shit?”

“The shady kind.”

“Ben. Do you want my advice or not?”

“Fine. The kind that could, hypothetically speaking, get an attorney disbarred if said attorney knew it was happening but didn’t do anything to stop it?”

“That depends on what this hypothetical attorney plans on doing with this hypothetical evidence,” Finn said. “Look, man, why are you asking me about this?”

“I think I’ve made a huge mistake, and I don’t know what I want to do about it.”

“Do you _actually_ give a shit about anything or anyone going on at First Order Properties?” Finn asked, sounding frustrated.

“No.” The answer came out so quickly that Ben barely had time to register it.

“If you—”

“I’m talking hypothetically, here.”

“Fine, if this _hypothetical attorney_ who is definitely not you has hypothetical evidence that a company that said hypothetical attorney really fucking hates—because let’s be real, he really fucking hates this company and has hated it for a long time, even if he won’t admit it—is doing some seriously shady shit that, if I’m reading the situation right, could potentially bring them down, then what’s the point of holding on to it if all he’s doing is using it to blackmail people that he hates at the company that he really fucking hates?”

That was it. That was the answer Ben was looking for. It was a stupid one, really; he should have been asking himself “what’s the point?” from the start.

But then again, for all that Ben had been a stellar student and brilliant attorney, he was kind of an idiot, as his internal monologue loved to remind him.

“Well?” Finn sounded impatient. Ben wondered if it was because he was sick of watching Ben lie to himself, or if it was because he was just tired. _Both, probably._

“If I give you something to pass on to my mo—Senator Organa,” he said slowly, “can you make sure my name stays out of it?”

 

* * *

 

“Seriously, Rey, you need to come to one of my yoga classes sometime. It’s _so_ relaxing. And you spend all that time hunched over in front of a computer screen. Doesn’t that hurt your back after a while?” Jessika asked.

_Is this what having friends is like?_ Rey wondered for the tenth time in the past hour. She’d started accepting more invites out to post-work drinks with people other than Rose. True, she’d spent a good chunk of the past month wanting to just lay on the couch and watch shitty tv instead of actually going out and doing things. But she was _actually_ trying to take her therapist’s advice for once instead of saying “not today, thanks,” which meant that she kept finding herself in the middle of conversations asking herself _is this what having friends is like?_

“Hey, I’ll have you know that we make it a priority to make sure all of our employees have ergonomically sound workstations,” Kaydel said as she reached over to grab a french fry from Rose’s plate. “We don’t want to fuck around with that. Nobody likes carpal tunnel.” She turned to Rey and said, “But actually, though, you should come to our yoga class sometime. You might like it.”

“But don’t feel obligated, or anything,” Jessika added quickly. “Yoga isn’t for everyone.”

“She’s just saying that because I fucking _hate_ yoga,” Rose mock-whispered to Rey.

It wasn’t an intentional “girl’s night out”—Rey had always hated that concept—but getting drinks and food with Rose, Kaydel, and Jessika turned out to be...sort of fun, actually. Enough so that it had become a Tuesday night thing.

So yeah, maybe this was what having friends was like.

_Who needs a so-called soulmate, anyway?_

That thought, like the one about friends, floated through her head about fifty times a day. It was starting to take a backseat to the ‘friends’ thought, which Rey thought was progress. (Her therapist did, too. Which was surprisingly validating.)

Rey caught Rose giving her a _look_ , like she knew where Rey’s mind had gone. Rey gave her a _look_ back as if to say _See? I’m here. I’m enjoying myself. I’m not alone._

If only she could convince herself that that was completely true.

Someone’s phone chimed, but Rey paid it no attention as she reached over to eat one of Rose’s french fries. That was something else she was getting used to, the idea that sharing food with friends was okay. No one was going to start a fight with Rey over a french fry. Not anymore.

“Oh shit, you guys,” Kaydel said as she looked at her phone screen. “You have to see this. Poe just sent it to me. They’re naming us on national television in connection with Senator Organa.” She turned her phone around so that the table could see what was playing on it.

At first, Rey assumed that it was some viral video (Kaydel, it turned out, _loved_ a good viral video), but then her ears tuned into what the video was saying.

“—and it’s thanks to Senator Leia Organa and her team that we’ve finally had the evidence to investigate First Order Properties,” a woman was saying to a reporter. “We’ve been after them for years, but they’ve been so good at covering their footsteps and bribing all the right people.”

“What changed?” the reporter asked.

“Someone stumbled upon the right evidence that we needed,” the woman said. “Paper evidence that their top officials were bribing all sorts of politicians, businesspeople, and government agencies in order to get what they wanted.”

“Give me that,” Rey said, grabbing the phone to pull it in closer. She was barely aware of Rose saying something about it to Kaydel and Jessika, too intent on listening to every single detail in case a certain name popped up in the report.

“First Order Properties CEO Billy Snoke and CFO Armitage Hux have been brought in for questioning, along with a dozen other employees,” the woman said, “but unfortunately, at this time, we can’t share any more information as the investigation is ongoing. I can’t help but think that this may clear the way for more legislation to protect the environment as well as low-income communities, which were hit the hardest by First Order Properties’s aggressive and illegal land acquisition tactics in the US as well as outside of it.”

_CEO Billy Snoke, CFO Armitage Hux, and a dozen other employees. But which employees?_

The camera turned back to the reporter. “And it’s all thanks to one formidable politician and an anonymous tip. Senator Leia Organa, as some of you may know, is famous for her work in environmentalism, and, more recently, her endorsement of a hot new company…” The video kept going, but Rey had stopped paying attention. _Snoke, Hux, and a dozen other employees. An anonymous tip to Leia Organa._

No. There was no way. Ben had made it pretty damn clear that he wanted to stick by First Order Properties, using whatever leverage Project Nox—which, Rey realized, was most likely the sheer amount of bribery the company was engaging in—to push himself to the top. Except…

If Ben was in charge, why wasn’t he being named?

Rey jumped at the touch of a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?” Rose asked quietly.

“No,” she said, slowly handing the phone back to Kaydel, who was giving her a weird look. She wondered briefly how much Kaydel knew about Ben Solo and what he was (or wasn’t) to Rey. “No, I’m not.” _Not even a little bit._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, someone literally picked ‘Jakkusen’ out of a hat in this AU. Why? No real reason.
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuilding question: do you think that soulmates ever have a semi-psychic connection?


	13. So much for “acting like mature, responsible adults”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit goes down, Ben disappears, Rey is maybe stalking?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so life is crazy these days and as a result, the posting schedule I've been trying to stick to has completely flown out the window. I _am_ going to finish this (it's mostly finished; I just have a couple of scenes left to write), I just won't necessarily have it done immediately. My goal is to have the rest of it up by the end of November, although I'm hoping to get it finished and posted sooner than that. I hope it'll be worth the wait :)
> 
> On an unrelated note: I’m not a lawyer so I have no idea what goes into opening a law firm. I’m going to assume it’s pretty damn complicated, though.

_Three weeks earlier..._

 

The decision to hand in everything he had on Project Nox was easily the most difficult decision of Ben’s entire life. 

Because not only was he handing over evidence that would destroy the company he’d built his career on, but he was handing over evidence that could get him disbarred if he was implicated in any of it _to his mother_.

Finn had promised that he wouldn’t tell Leia where he’d gotten the evidence, but Ben knew his mother, and he knew that she was smart enough to figure it out. She’d always had a sixth sense for things like that, and she _had_ to know that Finn knew Ben because of the work he’d been doing at First Order Properties. Finn had made it pretty clear that even though he’d kept Ben’s name out of it, he was more than welcome to make an appearance at Senator Organa’s local office, but Ben couldn’t bring himself to do that. He was still too busy sorting out the disaster that was his life and his career. Reconciling with his family—if he ever felt up for it—was something that he just didn’t have the energy or mental capacity to deal with right now.

_Step One: Hand in evidence of widespread corruption and bribery.  
__Step Two: Figure out what the fuck I’m going to do with my life now.  
__Step Three: Worry about everything else later._  

“What did you originally want to do after you got out of law school?” Finn asked when Ben handed over the Project Nox files he’d stolen from Hux’s office.

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “It just seemed like the right thing to do. My family’s full of lawyers.”

“Don’t you have to choose something to specialize in? Like a college major, but for a law degree.”

“Generally, yes.”

“Okay. So what did you want to specialize in when you started law school?” 

The truth was that it was so long ago that Ben couldn’t really remember. Everything from that point in his life was a jumble of tension, stress, arguments with his parents, insomnia, his uncle’s betrayal, and Snoke whispering in his ear that Ben was meant for greatness but only if Snoke could help him achieve it. “I honestly have no idea,” Ben said, unable to hold back the frustration in his voice.

“Hey man, I’m trying to help. Don’t give me that look.”

“I know, and I appreciate it. I’m not mad at you. I’m just…”

“Frustrated?”

“Yes, exactly!”

“No shit.”

Ben opened his mouth to tell Finn to fuck off, but he closed it just in time. Pissing off the one person he had in his life at the moment was the fast track to further burning everything down. “Maybe I don’t know what my original goals were, but I have to do something to balance out all of the evil shit I’ve done while working at First Order Properties.” As usual, Ben’s mouth was one step ahead of his brain, and he hadn’t even realized that he wanted that until the words were already out of his mouth.

Finn gave him a slow smile. “Do you actually mean that?”

Ben sighed. “You were right. Rey was right. I was miserable at that fucking company. I made a lot of bad choices. I’d like to make some right ones, for once.”

“Speaking of,” Finn said, adopting the kind of too-casual tone that suggested that he was about to say something that was going to piss Ben off. “Have you talked to Rey since...you know?”

Ben shook his head. _Step 2.5: Figure out things with Rey._ “She hates me,” he said. “She always did, but even if she didn’t, she definitely does now. She thinks I sold her out to Snoke and to be honest, I’m not so sure I didn’t.”

“Are you going to tell her what you’re doing with all of this?” Finn asked, nodding at the bag containing all of the Project Nox files that Ben had managed to steal.

“She doesn’t want to hear from me,” Ben said.

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“All I’ve ever done with Rey is fuck up,” he said. “I called her a ‘stupid hippie bitch’ from the start, and things never really got better from there. In case you hadn’t noticed,” he added wryly, “I’m a complete and utter disaster and even if I _did_ want to talk to her again, which I’m not saying I do, she deserves better than me.”

“Don’t you think she has the right to make that decision?” Finn asked. “And anyway, you two are literally _meant_ for each other.”

“All that soulmate stuff is bullshit. No matter what I feel for Rey, _that_ hasn’t changed.”

“Do you ever listen to yourself speak? It’s like you’re saying two completely contradictory things in the same sentence.” 

This time, Ben didn’t hold back when he said “Fuck off, no I don’t.”

Finn rolled his eyes. “Fine, whatever, soulmate stuff is ‘bullshit’, despite the fact that you obviously feel _something_ for Rey.”

“It doesn’t matter what I feel,” Ben said. “She hates me, which she’s made pretty damn clear. I’m not going to go busting back into her life just to continue beating that dead horse.” He felt his throat tighten and his heartrate pick up, signaling the onset of another panic attack. _One more reason why I should stay out of Rey’s life._ No matter what Finn said, she deserved better.

(Ben didn’t know which had been more surprising: realizing that he was in love with Rey, or realizing that he loved her enough to let her go. It had hit him like a train about thirty seconds after he made the decision to hand over the files on First Order Properties. The ensuing panic attack was...epic, to say the least.)

The whole thing was stupid, really. And it was so fucking _typical_ of him that it took hitting rock bottom to realize that he was in love with the person who he’d unintentionally stomped all over on his way down.

“Can we drop it?” he said, looking down at the bag of files. Embarrassingly, he was pretty sure that Finn could tell how tense he was from the sudden change in his tone of voice. Which, in Ben’s experience, meant that he was about to get picked on for betraying some semblance of emotion.

But Finn surprised him by simply nodding and saying, “Okay. So what now?” And that was it. Conversation over. He didn’t try to manipulate Ben into giving any more information away, and he didn’t make fun of Ben for the obvious distress in his voice. So maybe not everyone was out to get him, but…

That still didn’t mean that everything was going to be okay. And anyway, he had a few things to take care of first. “I have a few ideas for what we can do with the files.”

 

* * *

 

_Now_  

 

Rey had been in a constant state of near-panic since seeing the news clip two weeks ago. She kept alternating between “block every possible mention of ‘First Order Properties’ online” and “obsessively keeping tabs on the scandal.” Ben’s name still hadn’t come up in any of the news reports, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he hadn’t gotten caught up in it. (The low point in all of it was when she set up a Google News alert for ‘First Order Properties.’ Setting one up for ‘Ben Solo’ seemed too close to stalking for comfort.)

But his name never surfaced. And eventually, the news cycle moved on to other scandals, because there was never a shortage of scandals.

The silver lining in all of it, if you had to find one, was that Concrete Resistance being named in conjunction with the politician responsible for bringing about the downfall of First Order Properties had made their popularity skyrocket. They’d had to hire on another programmer to help with Rey’s workload, among other employees. As much as Rey loved the intimacy of working on a tightly-knit team, it felt good that they were successful enough to need to hire more employees. And it felt _really_ good knowing that she was a part of something, even if it was just work. 

But she just couldn’t let the First Order Properties thing go.

“Do you think Ben had anything to do with it?” Rey asked Rose for the millionth time as another Google alert for ‘First Order Properties’ appeared in her inbox.

“I don’t know,” Rose said, not looking up from her computer screen.

“Does Finn know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should I do something?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should I—”

“Rey,” Rose said, finally looking up from her computer. “We do this, like, ten times a day. Do I think that he’s an asshole for abandoning you? Yes, I do. Does that mean you should never speak to him again? I don’t know. He’s _your_ soulmate, not mine. But if you really want to know, just _ask him._ ”

Rey felt her whole body tense up. “I can’t do that,” she said, embarrassed by how tight her voice sounded.

“Why not?”

It was a simple question that Rey had been asking herself, but she had yet to find the answer. “I just can’t,” she said. “And besides, I don’t have his number.”

“Bullshit. After all that time you spent texting him when you thought no one was looking?” Rey sputtered, but Rose just gave her a half-smile. “Rey, I never want to see you look the way you did that night again, but you need to rip the band-aid off and talk to him if you ever want to be able to let this go.” The smile grew when she added, “You’re too stubborn to move on without closure.”

Right. Closure. That was important. But… “I don’t know how,” she mumbled.

“I know saying this makes it sound like I’m endorsing stalking—which, for the record, I’m not—but you do know where he lives, right? You could just go there. I’m going to assume that if he’s not in jail, he’s unemployed right now.”

Rey _really_ didn’t want to stalk him. She didn’t want to be that desperate. But…

_Okay, yeah, I am that desperate,_ she admitted to herself later on that evening as she stood in front of Ben’s building, trying to see if there were any lights on in his apartment. She’d been there enough times that the doormen who worked later hours recognized her, so nobody stopped her as she made her way up to Ben’s apartment.

As she approached the door, she heard a voice. Multiple voices, actually. _What the…?_ Ben didn’t have any friends. Well, maybe he did, but he didn’t have the kind of friends that he invited over.

Did he?

Before Rey could decide whether or not she was going to knock, the door opened and a woman she didn’t recognize looked at her. “Are you here for the viewing?” she asked.

“Viewing?”

“The apartment viewing. Units in this building always go so fast, you know. If you want the apartment, you’ll have to fill out an application today.”

Rey double-checked the apartment number. It was definitely Ben’s apartment. Except...“When did the last occupant move out?”

“Oh, I’m sorry! Are you looking for...what was his name, Ren? Ron?”

“Ben,” Rey said. “And yes. When did he move out?”

“Last month. It was strange, actually. He’s been a tenant here for eight years, then suddenly, bam! I’ve got a phone call saying he wants to break his lease and move out immediately.”

“Do you have a forwarding address?” If she was going to sink so low as to show up at his apartment (which wasn’t even his apartment anymore), she may as well take it one step further and ask his now-former landlord were he was living.

The landlord frowned at her. “I’m sorry, who are you?” she said.

“I’m—” _Nobody._ “Never mind,” she said. “Good luck renting the apartment.”

Great. So she had no phone number _and_ no address. 

It took two more days before Rey finally gave in to the sad urge to google him, and then another four days before she found herself standing in front of an old building, praying that the address for _Ben Solo, Attorney_ that she found online was actually him and not some other Ben Solo (although really, how many attorneys named Ben Solo could there possibly be in one city?).

The fact that the office was so new that it still had a temporary placeholder in the directory on the first floor of the building made Rey’s heart pound harder. _Am I really doing this?_ she asked herself as she made her way up the stairs. (Taking the stairs up to the third floor would give her time to think.) _Is this a good idea? What do I even expect to happen?_

The truth was, it was probably a terrible idea and she had prepared a whole speech that she was most likely going to forget as soon as she saw him anyway. She knew this, and yet she still wasn’t ready for the sound of his voice saying “Come in, it’s open” as she knocked on the door to his new office.

If she hadn’t known that he’d just opened up the office by the temporary name plate downstairs, she did by the state of the office. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture, and he was busy organizing something on a desk, facing away from the door. Rey could barely think over the way her heart was pounding in her chest (and _not_ because she’d just walked up three flights of stairs). She opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn’t find her voice.

He knew someone was there, though, because when she didn’t speak, he turned around and said, “What can I help you—”

Rey had never felt such a heavy silence in her entire life. It was almost as bad as that first day that they’d swapped words so many months ago.

Worse, actually. They had _history_ now.

And she had no idea what she was really feeling, and no idea what she wanted to say, but she was 98% sure that the look on Ben’s face was a mirror image of the one on hers when he whispered her name.

“Hi,” she said. Whispered, actually. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m looking for some legal advice,” she said, barely able to believe the words were coming out of her mouth. “Is now a bad time?”

 

* * *

 

Deciding to start his own one-person not-for-profit law firm was probably the dumbest decision of Ben’s life.

Okay. So that was a lie. Not walking out of Snoke’s office with Rey was the dumbest decision of his life, followed by the decision to actually listen to Snoke in the first place, which was tied with the decision to drive his father’s prized car into his uncle’s first-floor office in the wake of Luke’s betrayal, nearly killing his father and cutting his face and chest open in the process.

In any case, it was still a dumb decision, because it required so much _effort_ and _paperwork_ and _money_ and _focus._ And it wasn’t that Ben didn’t have the money for it—he’d managed to get himself out of student debt and then save up a _lot_ , which was the only good thing to come out of his time at First Order Properties—but _damn,_ the sheer amount of _paperwork_. And it wasn’t even like he had someone to split the work with, since he was doing this all on his own. But…

It was worth it. It was worth it to have his own space and live by his own rules and to not have to answer to any sort of boss. (Well, okay, so he had to comply with local and federal laws and regulations, but aside from that.) He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Finn that he wanted to do something good. And in the madness of quitting his job and burning the company to the ground in the process, he’d realized that he could start by opening up his own small law firm to offer his services to people and not corporations.

Was he going to fail at it? Probably, eventually. But in the meantime, it felt good to use his powers for good instead of for evil.

But opening up his own law firm didn’t negate any of the evil shit he’d done in the past. And it definitely didn’t mean that he could talk to Rey now, because that ship had sailed, and the only thing he could think to do was salvage what he could and hope that she found someone who wasn’t a complete and utter disaster of a human being. As a result, he thought for a moment that he was dreaming when she walked into his new office while he was in the middle of sorting files.

The casual way that she’d said _I’m looking for some legal advice_ was completely at odds with the look she was giving him. Ben was pretty sure he was going to have a heart attack. _Rey is here. In my office. What do I do?!_

When he didn’t respond, she continued. “See, I work at this start-up, and even though I’m a software developer, my boss assigned me this stupid project ages ago that involves some legal research. And I used to know this really good attorney. Well, he was a bag of dicks, but like I’m one to judge. Anyway, we hated each other, except that I don’t think we actually did in the end, because he made me feel like I wasn’t alone for the first time in my life.”

Ben didn’t think he was breathing. At some point, she’d moved so that she was standing right in front of him, close enough to touch. He was frozen in place, his brain too scattered to figure out how to respond.

“He worked at this terrible company and work was always a point of contention between us, and then he chose the company over me, so things crashed and burned between us.” Ben cringed, unsure of how to respond.

But she wasn’t finished speaking. “Not that it had necessarily been a healthy dynamic in the first place, though. And the weird thing is, all this time I thought I hated him, but then I saw all this stuff on the news about his terrible company, and his name wasn’t anywhere in any of the reports. He’d fallen off the edge of the planet, so by the time I realized that I really needed to talk to him to ask him _why_ , I had to resort to googling him, which made me feel like a _total_ stalker.”

She finally paused, like her brain had caught up to the fact that she was speaking.

_Quick, you idiot. Say something. And say the_ right thing _for once._ “I don’t think it counts as stalking if he wanted to be found” was all that came out of his mouth.

Her mouth opened, and then she looked like she wanted to strangle him for a moment. “Are you fucking kidding me? I thought you were avoiding me, and you wanted to be found this entire fucking time?!”

“Rey, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a disaster. I didn’t want to drag you down with me.” _May as well go for the brutally honest truth,_ he figured. 

“Fucking _hell,_ Ben,” she seethed. “I’ve been going crazy for the past month, trying to figure out what the fuck happened to you. Fuck, I thought you _hated_ me. But, like an idiot, I was worried about you, because I knew all this shit was going down and I had no idea if you were going down with it or not.”

_What?_ “You were...worried about me?”

“Yeah, because you’re an idiot and _I’m_ an idiot for caring about you after you broke my fucking heart and for some _stupid_ reason I had to know if you were okay.”

Ben was pretty sure his heart was pounding so hard that Rey could hear it from where she stood two feet away from him. “I…” _I fucked up. I didn’t want to hurt you. I love you._ “I’m _sorry._ ” And then the words started to tumble out of his mouth faster than he could keep track of. “I don’t hate you, not even a little bit, and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you. I don’t think I realized that at the time. And then I thought I was finally getting what I wanted, and then all I could think of was you telling me that I was miserable and that I never did anything right, and I just wanted to change that for once, even though I’d completely fucked up any chance of making things right with you. All I have _ever_ done is fuck up. I actually exceeded my own expectations for myself with you, because I never thought I’d fuck up so badly that I fell in love with someone who hated me, and then caused that person to hate me even more as I continued to burn every single bridge in my entire fucking life.” He didn’t even register that he’d let the L-word slide until he saw Rey’s eyes widen. _Shit. I think I fucked_ that _up, too._

“ _Fuck,_ Ben, you can’t just _say_ shit like that,” she said, her eyes bright. Of _course_ a declaration of love from him would make her cry. Could he get any worse? “Don’t assume you know what I’m feeling. _I_ don’t even know what I’m feeling half the time.”

“I’m sorry!” he said. “It’s just, I realized I love you and then there was all this anxiety and then I was busy trying to burn First Order Properties to the ground anonymously and I knew that I’d fucked up so badly with you and I was scared of how big that fuck-up felt.”

She took another step closer to him. “Do you actually mean that?”

“The anxiety? Or the fucking up?” _Or that I love you?_ He couldn’t bring himself to ask that last one. He didn’t want to hear her say that she didn’t love him.

“Both.”

“Rey,” he said slowly. “I am fucking _terrified_ of how I feel about you.”

“Oh good,” she said faintly. “Because I think I’m equally terrified of how I feel about you.”

That caught his attention. “Wait, what do you feel about me?”

She looked away for a moment before taking a deep breath, like she was steeling herself for something. “It kind of sneaked up on me because I’m really good at lying to myself, especially about big-ticket items like this. And, like, I’ve never been in love before, so I didn’t really get it at first.”

He frowned. “What are you saying?” She wasn’t making any sense.

“I’m saying I’m in love with you, and it scares the _fuck_ out of me.”

_Wait. What?_

For a moment, it felt like he was floating outside of his body, watching this interaction from the outside. He didn’t deserve this, he didn’t deserve _her_. He didn’t realize that he’d said those words aloud until she groaned and said, “Why not?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you deserve me?”

Ben wasn’t really prepared to answer that question. “Look at me,” he said. “I’m a disaster. I had the choice to leave that office with you, and like an idiot, I threw it away. I asked you for help, and when you offered it, I didn’t take it. And all I’ve ever done is insult you, anyway. How could you _possibly_ forgive me for any of it?”

“That’s why I came to find you, actually,” she said. “I threw that information at you and never stopped to think that maybe, it wasn’t that easy for you to just leave a situation you’d been so deeply tangled in it for so long. I’ve been alone for my entire life so I just assumed that you were abandoning me, because all anyone has ever done is abandon me.” The words made him feel an odd combination of heartbroken for her and rage that anyone would let this incredible person out of their life. “I don’t want to be alone anymore,” she added in a whisper. Then, before he could respond, she added, “And it’s not like I haven’t insulted you every step of the way, either. I’m not always a good person. Thank the stars for therapy, right?” She smiled like she was trying to lessen the weight of the words.

He’d been seeing his therapist twice a week since everything had started to burn down. “Yeah, thank the stars for therapy. I can’t believe I ever thought we didn’t have anything in common.”

“Abandonment issues and insults?” She was trying to tease him. _I think._

“That, and a coffee addiction, and a love for sci-fi, and a million other things.”

“Also, I’m not saying this is the only reason I love you, but the sex is amazing as well. You have quite a way with words.”

“That’s probably the only situation in which you’ll ever say that about me.” He was only half-joking. He hoped she knew that.

“I don’t know,” she said, reaching down to take his hands in hers. “Hearing you say you love me is pretty nice.”

He was pretty sure that it was the sappiest, clingiest thing he’d ever done when he said, “I’ll tell you every day. Hell, I’ll tell you a hundred times a day. I love you, Rey Jakkusen. If you’ll have me, you’ll never be alone again.”

She stepped closer and put her arms around his neck. “You’ll never be alone again either, despite what our mutual abandonment issues say. Because I love you too, Ben Solo.” Her lips were only a breath away from his when she said, “Can I kiss you now?”

Rather than risk saying the wrong thing (for the millionth time), because he was on a roll for once in his life, he wrapped his arms around her waist and closed the gap between them. _Yeah. Let’s never be alone again._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn’t think I’d forgotten Poe’s “legal research” project for Rey, did you?
> 
> Spoiler alert: they’re actually going to set some healthy boundaries with each other! Their therapists are so proud of them.
> 
> Today’s soulmate AU worldbuliding question: what do you think happens when people touch each others’ soulmarks? Is it okay to touch someone’s marks, or is it taboo?


	14. So much for “the author was aiming to finish this fic three months ago”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a couple of drabbles/deleted scenes and a note.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven’t forgotten about this story, I promise! I’ve just been having a difficult time with part of it for Reasons, which is incredibly frustrating for More Reasons. So instead of beating myself up for having writer’s block, I’ve been working on a couple of other projects. One is [One Happy Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16597673/chapters/38898125), which is the backstory for the Finn/Rose/Poe/Kaydel relationship here. The other is [‘Tis the season for fake girlfriends](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17087222/chapters/40182437), a canon-divergence story that makes shameless use of holiday fic/romcom tropes.
> 
> The good news is, the epilogue is complete, so once I get the next chapter out then the epilogue will be soon to follow. In the meantime, I had a couple little “deleted scenes” for this fic, so have these drabbles as an apology and a promise that I am still working on it/I do intend to finish it. The first two are sometime between the last chapter (13) and the next one (14...okay, technically 15 because of this drabble) that I couldn’t quite fit into the next one. The last one is a bit longer and it’s a deleted scene from between chapters 8 and 9, when Rey and Ben are still sleeping together.

 

_(Between chapters 13 and 14)_

Ben gave her a quick kiss on her forehead before pushing her away gently. It was a tiny gesture, but she could feel a goofy grin spread on her face as she watched him reach over to grab a set of keys.

“What is it?” he asked when he turned back to her.

“Nothing,” she said, fighting to tone it down. Then, in the interest of going for honest, open communication (something else she’d been working on in therapy), she said, “I’m just really happy right now.”

He didn’t say anything, but the way his face turned red and his expression shifted, she could tell that he was trying to hold back a really goofy grin, too.

 

* * *

 

_(Between chapters 13 and 14)_

“I can’t believe you’re opening your own law firm,” Rey said.

“Speaking of,” Ben said. “Were you serious when you said you needed legal advice?”

She laughed. “Yes, actually. Poe assigned me this project ages ago, probably just to needle me about you because of something Rose or Finn told him, but I let it slide off my radar because I didn’t want to deal with it.”

“Wow. Your boss is _really_ invested in our relationship.”

“Yeah, that household is _not_ subtle.”

 

* * *

 

_(Between chapters 8 and 9)_

The sound of a phone chime startled Ben out of the dream he’d been having. He groaned and picked up his phone. _Should have put it on silent,_ he thought. _Who the hell is texting me at 1:37 in the morning?_ He realized how stupid the question was a moment later, when he’d woken up enough to look at the sender.

 

Rey Jakkusen  
  
**Rey:** You up?  
  
**Ben:** Now I am. What do you want?  
  
**Rey:** I want a large buffalo chicken pizza.  
  
**Ben:** So call Dominos.  
  
**Rey:** What do you think I want, you idiot? I want your cock. What other reason would I have to text you? 

 

Despite himself, he smiled. He’d spent the last week and a half in Tokyo, and if he was being honest, the only reason he’d looked forward to getting back home was the inevitable reunion hatesex he’d have with Rey.

 

**Rey:** You are home now, right?   
  
**Ben:** I'm jetlagged as fuck.  
  
**Ben:** But yes, I'm home.  
  
**Rey:** Good. You owe me.  
  
**Ben:** I think YOU owe ME.  
  
**Ben:** I thought we agreed on no pictures during work hours?  
  
**Rey:** Who else was I going to show off my new underwear to?

 

He didn’t know if she’d meant it that way, but...well, he liked the reminder that she wasn’t interested in anyone else. Even though it was just a sex thing.

 

**Ben:** Point taken.  
  
**Rey:** I'm coming over, and you're going to give me the best head of my life.  
  
**Ben:** I am?

 

Although now that she mentioned it, that did seem like a good offer. The thought of how it felt to have her tangle her fingers in his hair while cursing him for making her feel so good, being told that no one was as good at making her come as he was…

 

**Ben:** Okay, fine. Come over.  
  
**Rey:** I knew you wanted it as badly as I do.  
  
**Ben:** Fuck you.  
  
**Rey:** That's the point, isn't it?


	15. So much for “destiny”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is not about destiny. It’s _not._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow okay it has been a minute, so let's recap: Ben metaphorically burned down First Order Properties and has started his own law firm so that he no longer has to answer to anyone else. Rey has been driving herself crazy trying to figure out what Ben's involvement in the First Order Properties scandal is, because they haven't been in contact at all. She resorts to googling him and finds his new office. They talk and admit that they're in love with each other.
> 
> If smut is not your thing...this chapter contains some. It sort of picks up at “Like you weren’t thinking the same thing” and definitely gets explicit a few lines later, at "As if he’d read her mind" and continues on through the end. I'll put a tl;dr in the end notes.
> 
> Confession: I was originally on the fence about writing this chapter, especially since it got, like, weirdly emotionally draining for a while, but: a) there were a couple of conversations they still needed to have, b) the story needed a little more smut, and c) what is up with the soulmarks, anyway?

They'd both agreed that taking things slow at first was a good idea, considering how unhealthy their past dynamic had been. It was disappointing in some ways (hello, self-inflicted blue balls), but they’d both agreed that they wanted to do things right this time. And anyway, Ben was busy trying to get his law firm open and then trying to advertise his services and Rey had her own things to do at work, but she said she was happy to help him and even if there wasn’t a whole lot that she could do, he liked having her around.

Plus, being so busy was _exhausting_. Ben hadn't realized how exhausted he was until one Friday night a couple of weeks later, when he and Rey had started ignoring the movie they'd put on in favor of making out on her couch. (Ben had recently come to appreciate how great kissing was, even when it wasn't an obvious precursor to sex.) "Not that I'm not enjoying myself," he murmured, "but I'm really fucking tired right now and I should probably go home." 

Rey froze. "You don't have to leave." She said the words so quietly he almost thought he'd dreamt them. When he didn't respond, she added, "I mean, you don't have to stay if you don't want, but I like having you here."

They'd only ever spent that one night together when Rey had fallen asleep in his bed after a particularly athletic round of sex, and then he'd pretended to be asleep when she woke him while sneaking out early the next morning. He knew he was awake enough to drag himself home if he had to, but... 

"Yeah," he said, giving her a sleepy kiss. "I want to stay." 

She turned off the movie and they pushed themselves off of her couch before making their way into her bedroom. "Don't take this the wrong way," she said, "but take off your trousers. No one gets a good night's sleep in jeans."

He smirked at her before stripping down to his underwear and crawling in bed. She followed a minute later, dressed in a large t-shirt and her underwear. There was a moment of awkward shuffling around as they both admitted that they didn't have a lot of experience with that sort of thing until they were comfortably curled around each other, his arm slung over her waist as they spooned. "This is nice," he murmured. 

"Yeah," she said as he drifted off. "It is."

He woke up the next morning confused as to why he wasn't in his own bed before remembering that he'd fallen asleep in Rey's the night before. But if he was in her bed... "Rey?" he said. When there was no response, he pushed himself up, feeling a fleeting panic as he thought for a moment that she'd sneaked out again ( _Sneaking out of her own apartment_? his inner monologue said. _That doesn't even make any sense._ )

He nearly tripped over his own legs as he pulled his jeans on and ventured out to see Rey standing in front of an open fridge, frowning at it. “I wanted to make you breakfast,” she said, “but all I have in here is condiments, half a dozen eggs, and a jar of peanut butter.” 

“You wanted to cook for me?” Ben didn’t know why that hit him so hard. Maybe it was because she seemed like she wanted to take care of him, and Ben had never felt like anyone had wanted to take care of him, even when he was a kid. _Don’t tear up. It’s just breakfast, you sentimental idiot._

“Is that okay?” she asked, closing the refrigerator door carefully. “I know I’m not the best cook, but—What’s wrong?” she said when she saw his expression.

_Fuck._ “Nothing,” he said quickly, reflexively trying to lie to cover up his emotions. And then he caught himself and realized what he was doing. “It’s stupid, but...I don’t even remember the last time someone offered to cook for me.” Her expression softened, and he realized that this was probably something big for her, too, after all of the food insecurity she’d experienced growing up. 

Wordlessly, she walked over to him and threw her arms around his neck. “It’s not stupid,” she whispered as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

This kind of emotional intimacy was terrifying. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” Ben mumbled into her hair.

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “I’m a mess, too. I had a panic attack when I realized I didn’t have anything good to cook for you. So I think that makes us even.”

Fucking hell. They were collectively having a meltdown about _breakfast_ , of all things.

_I really fucking love this woman._

“Compromise,” she finally said, kissing his cheek. “Let me take you out to breakfast.” 

“Qui-Gon’s kitchen?” he said. “They make the best pancakes.” 

She let out a soft laugh. “Now, where have I heard that before?”

 

* * *

 

The fact that they collectively had so many “weird trauma things” never ceased to amaze Rey. The weirdest part was that she would have thought that their shared abandonment issues would make the whole thing backfire, but somehow, it just made them _click._

Not in a soulmate way, mind you. Just in the way that two people with shared trauma and insane chemistry clicked.

And speaking of insane chemistry...yeah, the whole “taking it slow” thing? Was getting more and more difficult as the weeks went on. After spending so much time locked in hate-fueled sexual tension, it was strange to have it swing around to the complete opposite direction, feelings-wise. 

It wasn’t like they were keeping things completely G-rated. They just hadn’t done more than a bit of fooling around on the occasions where he ended up spending the night with her. (His fingers, as magical as they were, weren’t completely satisfying anymore.) So it was with an ulterior motive that she offered to help him unpack one Friday night when he admitted that he still hadn’t completely moved into his new apartment. 

_I’d appreciate the help,_ he’d replied. _I could use an extra pair of hands._ And she’d wondered if he didn’t have an ulterior motive, either.

She opened an unlabeled box that had been sitting on his coffee table and smiled when she saw it was full of books. “The Poetry of Pablo Neruda?” she said. “I never would have pegged you as someone who’s into poetry.”

“Hey, that is some really romantic shit,” Ben said, reaching from behind her to take the book. “‘Love, how often I loved you without seeing, without remembering you, not recognizing your glance, not knowing you,’” he murmured in her ear as he placed the book on the shelf in front of her.

“‘I loved you without knowing I did, I searched to remember you,’” Rey said as he wrapped his arms around her waist. “Sonnet 22.”

“I never would have pegged you as someone who’s into poetry, either,” he said, planting a soft kiss on her neck. 

“It’s a little dramatic sometimes, but so are we,” she said, tilting her head to give him better access. 

“I tried really hard for a long time to not want this,” he admitted. 

“Me too,” she whispered.

“Now that I have it, I never want to let you go.” There was an almost imperceptible way that his voice caught that told her how much it cost him to make that admission. 

_You’re not alone. Neither are you._

“I never want you to let me go, either,” she said. “So I’m pretty sure you’re stuck with me.”

“I’m not an easy person to love.”

“Neither am I.” _Abandonment issues, and all that._ “I think our entire relationship has proven that.”

“I still don’t think that we were destined to be together. It was just a bunch of random circumstances that happened to lead to this moment.”

“It took a lot of work for us to get here,” Rey said, turning around to face him. “I wouldn’t change it for anything. Well, I mean, it wasn’t always _healthy_ , and I don’t think it’s ever going to be easy.”

“The best things never are,” he said, kissing her forehead. _Huh,_ Rey thought as her nerves fluttered in her stomach. _Turns out that’s a small gesture that means a lot to me._

Oh. She _really_ loved this guy. _What a terrifying thing to feel._

He tilted her chin up to meet her lips. He kissed her almost hesitantly, and if it had been anyone else under any other circumstances, Rey would have been offended. But since she was pretty sure she was doing the exact same thing, it was… 

Okay, so it was still terrifying. But it was okay, because Ben was right there with her. 

The kiss stayed hesitant for all of three seconds before they both got the message that _it’s okay, this is happening, this is real_. And then she was wrapping her arms around his neck like she couldn’t stand even being a few inches away from him and she was pretty sure that if there hadn’t been a bookcase in the way, he would have picked her up and pinned her against the wall. “Do you need help unpacking anything in your bedroom?” she whispered as he kissed her jaw.

He huffed a soft laugh. “Subtle,” he said.

“Like you weren’t thinking the same thing,” she said as he led her down the hall to his bedroom. There were boxes of unpacked things in one corner of the room, but Rey barely had time to register that before Ben pulled her in for a kiss that was _much_ more heated than their previous ones. And not that they’d ever had passionless sex (passionless _anything_ , really), but _whoa._ It was like they’d unlocked a whole new level of intensity.

She gently pushed him down onto the bed and crawled in his lap before thinking _too much clothing._ She barely had time to think before she was trying to tug his t-shirt over his head, needing to feel his skin against hers. Considering the speed at which he was trying to do the same to her, he must have felt the same way, and there was an awkward moment where they ended up tangled in each others’ clothes before they finally got themselves sorted out. Ben’s eyes drifted to her collarbone before snapping back up to meet hers. They’d never acknowledged it, but they’d always had an unspoken agreement to avoid touching each others’ marks. Rey didn’t know what would happen if they did, but it had always felt like touching the marks meant acknowledging something that neither of them wanted to acknowledge. 

He reached up tentatively to cup her cheek before trailing his fingers down the side of her neck. Rey shivered. That was something else that had never worn off, the feeling of sparks when he touched her. She doubted it ever would at this point. His fingers hovered on the edge of the words on her collarbone and he looked at her like he was asking permission. She kissed him, putting her hand over his and dragging his fingers over them. And then…

“Huh,” Ben said. “I thought for sure they would, like, burn me or something. Do you feel anything?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I mean, it feels good, but anywhere you touch me feels good. _Really_ good.”

She thought she detected a faint blush, but before she could react, he leaned down to kiss her collarbone.

“Still nothing,” she said. “Aside from the usual.”

“Weird,” he said. “I thought for sure that it would do something.”

“Take off your trousers,” she said suddenly, standing up. “I want to touch yours. Maybe you’re not doing it right.”

“If you insist,” he said with a smirk as he stood up. Not wanting to repeat the shirt debacle, she took hers off as well. It wasn’t like they were going to stay on, anyway.

_Fuck._ It was almost like she’d forgotten how beautiful he was. The scar running down his face and chest could have been gruesome, but it wasn’t. It was a reminder that he was a survivor. Just like her. And then there were all the muscles, and the soft, silky hair, and the brown eyes looking at her like he couldn’t believe she was real. “I really fucking love you,” she caught herself saying as she pulled him in for another kiss.

“You have no idea how beautiful you are,” he said, his lips barely brushing hers. “I’ve always thought that, even when I thought I hated you. Even before that day in the park. Half the reason I always went to Kanata Brews was because I was working up the courage to talk to you.”

_What in the—this is too good to be true._ “Are you serious?” she said.

“I mean, I—” He had that look in his eyes, like he knew he’d said something wrong and was trying to find the best way to backtrack. “Sorry, that’s probably creepy.”

“No, I mean, I felt the same way about you. Rose gave me so much shit about it.” She laughed. “Stars, I can’t believe you were thinking the same thing about me.” 

“We can never tell her,” he deadpanned.

“She doesn’t need any more ammo,” Rey agreed. “She’ll just use it as fuel for her ‘you two were destined to be together’ thing.” _This is_ not _about destiny. And I’m done discussing someone else now._

As if he’d read her mind, he closed the gap between them, wrapping one hand around her waist and trailing the other one up the planes of her stomach to cup her breast. She couldn’t hold back a moan. _What the hell,_ she thought. _How does a simple movement feel so fucking good?_

Encouraged by her reaction, Ben moved his other hand from her waist down between her legs. Rey didn’t realize how wet she was until his fingers slid over her thighs before finding _just_ the right spot. “Fuck, I love how wet you get for me,” he whispered into her ear before nibbling on her earlobe.

“You’ve ruined me,” she said. “I can’t come unless I’m thinking about you.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he groaned. “Rey, you’re going to kill me.”

“Don’t joke,” she said. “You’re not allowed to die.” _Now, about those soulmarks…_ As much as she wanted him to keep touching her, she had something she wanted to try.

She gently pushed his hand away. She didn’t want to get distracted and anyway, she was so keyed up that it probably wouldn’t take her long to come like that, and she wasn’t ready for that yet.

She couldn’t get enough of him, her fingers running over the hard planes of his chest and stomach as she trailed open-mouthed kisses down his chest and stomach. He twined his fingers through her hair gently and groaned as she pressed a kiss to his hip, sucking gently on the skin there. Her gaze flickered up to meet his before she smirked and trailed the tip of her tongue up the bottom of his cock, flicking it over the head. He gasped her name, and she flicked her tongue over the slit one more time before murmuring, “Later. There’s something I need to do first.”

As she trailed her fingertips down his thigh to look at the words written above his knee, she realized suddenly that she’d never really taken a close look at Ben’s soulmarks before. There was something familiar about the slant of the words, and the way the _g_ s were looped… “This is my handwriting,” she said, looking up at Ben. “Did you know that?”

“I’ve never seen your handwriting, so no,” he said. “And anyway, I haven’t exactly spent a ton of time looking at those marks.”

“If your marks are in my handwriting,” Rey said, “then that means...holy shit, Ben. You have amazing handwriting.” She’d always tried to avoid examining her marks too closely, but the shape of the letters was so smooth that she’d assumed it was some cosmic form of Arial. 

“Yeah, I, uh,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “I was really into calligraphy when I was younger. It’s a weird hobby, I know.”

She was tempted to tease him a little bit (she actually found it endearing as fuck), but there were plenty of opportunities for that later.

A whole lifetime of opportunities, she hoped.

And anyway, there was something about running her fingers over the letters on his thigh and feeling the way they were slightly raised that she was surprised to realize felt... _intimate_. Which she probably should have expected, actually, given the whole nature of the marks, but it still surprised her.

No burning, though. No extra shocks. “I thought it would feel like touching a live wire,” she said.

“Kind of anticlimactic, isn’t it?” 

“That’s the only thing that’s anticlimactic about us, I hope.” 

He snorted. “I don’t think that’s ever been an issue for us.”

“For all the time I’ve spent yelling at you, you’ve never left me unsatisfied.” _Now let me return the favor,_ she thought, pressing an open-mouthed kiss onto his hip before resuming where she’d been a moment ago. She wet her lips with her tongue before wrapping her lips around the tip of his cock, his answering groan going straight to her core. Fuck, she’d forgotten how much she loved the taste of him and the way his cock twitched when she hollowed her cheeks. 

“Wait,” he gasped suddenly. Rey paused, wondering what the hell he could possibly want right now. “I have an idea. What if you touched my knee with your collarbone?” 

She couldn’t help it. The absurdity of the suggestion combined with the timing of it made her laugh so hard she fell backwards.

Ben leaned down and picked her up and put her on the bed. Rey caught a glimpse of a fond smile in between giggles, but she was still laughing when he leaned over her and kissed her. “I wasn’t completely joking, you know,” he said.

“I know,” Rey said. “That’s why it’s so funny. You nerd.” 

“You love it.” 

“Yeah, I do.”

She pulled him down next to her and tangled her fingers in his hair as she kissed him. She hummed as his hands skimmed down her body until he was trailing them along her inner thighs, getting close, but not quite touching her where she wanted him. “Ben,” she murmured, shifting so that her knee was over his hip, giving him better access.

“What is it?” he said, ignoring the obvious hint. She tried shifting her hips to get the friction she needed, but he pulled his hand away. “Something you want?”

“Stop teasing me.”

He hummed into her neck as he sucked at her pulse point. “We have all night, don’t we?”

“ _Ben._ ”

“So impatient,” he said, but he gave in to her wordless demand, letting his fingers ghost over her lips. “Stars, you’re so wet,” he said as he slid one finger inside of her, and then the other. She gasped at the friction that was almost too much but in the best way possible.

But it still wasn’t enough. “Ben,” she moaned. “I need you inside of me.”

“I _am_ inside of you,” he said, giving his hand a couple of hard thrusts for emphasis.

“Not what I meant and you know it,” she said as she pushed his hand away. “Come here.”

They shifted positions so that she was lying underneath him, pinned between his arms. It suddenly occurred to Rey that out of all of the time they’d spent hatefucking in the past, they’d never had sex in this position. There was just something so intimate about kissing during sex, and she was pretty sure that Ben felt the same way, considering he’d never suggested it, either.

And then there was the way she was lying beneath him, pinned down. She’d always figured she would feel trapped in a position like that, especially considering the sheer _size_ of Ben, but she just felt...safe. Which said a lot about how far they’d come in their relationship.

“Hey,” he said gently. “You still with me?” 

She kissed him slowly. “Always,” she said. She snaked a hand down to guide him into place and they both let out a groan as he sank inside of her slowly. 

“Fuck,” he said, dropping his forehead to hers. “I missed this.”

“I did, too,” she whispered. “Fuck, I forgot how much you fill me up.”

He huffed a soft laugh. “I know for a fact you can take more.” 

She shifted her hips, trying to find a subtler way to say _Shut up and fuck me, Ben._ The first time they’d fucked was still one of the hottest things she’d ever experienced, but there was a time and a place, and this was definitely not the time to repeat any of the things they’d said to each other that night.

He got the nonverbal message, though, and he slowly started to move, all the time whispering sweet, dirty things to her in between kisses to her lips, her jaw, her neck, and her collarbones. _You feel so perfect, you’re so beautiful, I can’t believe I’m yours and you’re mine, my love._ At some point she wasn’t sure who was saying what; the words started to devolve into gibberish as they both neared the peak. At any other point in her life, with anyone else, Rey would have laughed this kind of thing off as something that only belonged in movies, but it just _worked._  

Rey barely recognized the sound of her own breathy, desperate voice when she said, “Ben, I’m so close, I—”

“Do it,” he said, his hips starting to stutter. “Come on, I want to feel you come on my— _fuck_.” She felt it start from somewhere deep in her core, her muscles clenching and pleasure radiating through her entire body. She’d have said it was like a fucking religious experience, if Rey had known anything about religion. A moment later, Ben followed, all but crushing his body into hers as he peppered her face with kisses.

It took them both a moment to catch their breath before Ben pulled out with a groan and laid down next to her, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his face into her neck. She could still feel his heart beating as rapidly as hers. “Holy shit,” she said. Why were her cheeks wet? They weren’t sweating _that_ hard, were they?

“You’re—are you _crying_?” He sounded too alarmed for someone who had just had mindblowing sex.

“I guess I am,” she said, turning to kiss him as reassurance that she was okay. “Wow. The things you do to me.”

He let out a shaky laugh and kissed her back. “The things we do to each other,” she amended. “You’re crying, too.”

“I’m not sure what my emotions are doing right now.” 

“In a good way, right?” She tried to keep the needy tone out of her voice because this was something they were working on, communication and processing their feelings instead of trying to cover them up with anger and avoidance.

“In a very good way,” he said, burying his face in her hair. “You bring out the best in me.”

“I’ve also brought out the worst.”

He laughed softly. “Clearly we’re not meant to be.”

This was something they’d both agreed on from the start, and it had never changed. “No,” she said, snuggling closer. “We got here all on our own.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr if you skipped the smut: Rey and Ben find out that touching each others' marks doesn't set off sparks or fireworks or whatever, but their marks are in each others' handwriting. (Ben's handwriting is amazing because he does calligraphy, of course.) They have super intimate soft sex, and they both (still) agree that the soulmates thing is bullshit and their relationship works because they've put the effort into it to make it work. Therapy is amazing, guys.
> 
> I'm predictable and I quoted Pablo Neruda in a fic again. This one is Sonnet 22, and [here's an English translation with the original poem in Spanish](https://spanishpoems.blogspot.com/2005/04/pablo-neruda-soneto-xxii.html).
> 
> I've had the epilogue ready to go for a while now, so that should drop later this week after another polishing pass. You guys have no idea how happy I am that I finally finished this chapter. It was so difficult to write and I don't even really know why. If you've stuck with me, thank you <3
> 
> Today's soulmates AU worldbuilding question: How much of a successful, healthy soulmates relationship is magic and chemistry, and how much of it is work?


	16. So much for “the end”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four months later...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments and kudos mean so much to me and I promise I will respond later; I just wanted to make good on my promise that this would go up later this week, and I've been busier than expected.

“It’s perfect brunch weather today,” Rose said as she, Poe, Kaydel, and Finn were led to an outdoor table at their favorite cafe. It was hot and sunny and Kaydel looked _so good_ in that sundress that she didn’t pull out of her wardrobe nearly often enough for Rose’s liking. She knew that Finn and Poe felt the same way, judging by the looks they always sneaked when Kaydel wore that dress. Once again, Rose felt that stupid little giddiness at the thought of _I can’t believe I’m this lucky to have these people in my life._

She hoped that feeling never, ever wore off. 

Brunch had become a monthly thing at some point that spring, when Rey and Ben finally got their shit together and it stopped being awkward that Ben and Finn were friends and Rose and Rey were friends and Poe and Kaydel were at the edges of the drama, aware that there was something going on that Rose and Finn didn’t want to discuss. Rose was still a little pissed off on Rey’s behalf for what had gone down that night at First Order Properties, but seeing as Rey herself had admitted that she’d fucked up, too, Rose could forgive Ben.

Besides, they made a cute couple, albeit in an unusual way.

The waitress was just taking everyone’s drink order when Rey and Ben arrived, walking hand-in-hand. (Which was another cute thing, because they always seemed so shy about it, even though there was such an _intensity_ to how they looked at each other, as well as the way they spoke to each other. Rose had, unfortunately, caught a glimpse of some of their more, uh, _explicit_ text messages once when she had borrowed Rey’s phone. What felt even more invasive was glancing at some of the love poetry they quoted at each other, mixed among the sexting.) “Hey guys,” Rey said as they sat down. She and Ben put in an order for two coffees, and then the waitress disappeared, leaving the six of them together.

They were both dressed for hot weather, Rey in a lightweight sundress, and Ben in shorts. Rose didn’t think she’d seen either of them dress like that, despite the heatwaves that sometimes hit their city. She couldn’t put her finger on why it was so unusual.

“I got an answer about what we legally can and can’t do with gathering users’ location data on our app,” Rey said to Poe.

Poe looked at Ben. “You know, we could just hire you as a consultant,” he said. “You spend enough time answering legal questions for us.”

“No thanks,” said Ben. “I like not having a boss.” Rose couldn’t help but wonder if the fact that Senator Organa was in regular contact with Concrete Resistance had something to do with it, too. She didn’t know the details; the only thing Rey had ever said on the subject was “Leia and I get lunch when she’s in town, but we don’t talk about Ben. He knows he’s welcome to join us for lunch, but I don’t think he’s ready for that yet. Someday, maybe. It’s up to him. I can’t make that decision for him.”

“You know,” Finn said suddenly, “now that I think about it, I’ve never seen your shoulders before, Rey.”

Ah. Yes. That was why Rey looked a bit strange today. She’d always made it a point to hide the words etched onto her collarbone. But the strapless sundress didn’t do anything to cover up the phrase _Go to hell, you stupid hippie bitch._

Poe let out a low whistle as he read the words.

“Seriously?” Kaydel said to Ben. “You said _that_ to her?”

He snorted. “You should see mine,” he said. Rey, to her credit, turned a little red.

“Why, what do they say?” Poe asked.

“Do you want to tell them, or should I?” Ben said, nudging Rey with his elbow.

She gave him a half-assed glare, then muttered, “Go fuck yourself with a cactus, you corporate bag of dicks.”

There was silence from the other four people at the table. Rose had heard the words before, but she still had a hard time smothering her laughter. It was just so _typical_ of stubborn, quick-to-anger Rey to scream that at someone after being called a ‘stupid hippie bitch,’ and then claim that they had nothing in common.

“Wow,” Poe said, finally breaking the silence. “You two really _were_ meant for each other.”

“No we weren’t,” Ben said quickly. Rey didn’t argue with him.

This was another argument that Rose—and Finn, probably—had heard before, and she barely suppressed an eye roll. She had long ago given up on arguing with Rey about this, after she and Ben had finally gotten over themselves and gotten together.

“Okay, you know that’s not how it works, right?” Kaydel said. “You say those words to each other, and it means that you’re meant to be together.”

Rey shook her head. “No. If we were meant to be together, then our relationship would have been easy from the start. We would have instantly fallen in love, and we wouldn’t have spent all that time fighting.”

“We just _happened_ to fall in love,” Ben said. “It just worked out like that. Fate had nothing to do with it.”

Finn didn’t bother hiding his own eye roll, but before he could say anything, Ben said “Don’t give me that look” to him. Rose assumed that they’d spent a lot of time arguing about that. Finn had never been good at keeping his mouth shut. Rose figured that it was why he and Ben had become friends, because people were usually too scared of Ben to stand up to him.

Plus, there was that thing where Ben had been lowkey obsessed with Rey since the start, and Finn was his main connection to her for a while. (Not that Rey had ever been any better, though. Rose was _never_ going to let her forget that her coffee shop crush turned out to be her soulmate.)

Not wanting to start an argument with the two most stubborn people on the planet, Rose decided that a subject change was welcome. “I love your dress, Rey,” she said. “Where did you get it?” The real question she wanted to ask was _What changed? I thought you hated showing off those marks_ , but she was pretty sure she already knew the answer to that one.

“Oh, thanks,” Rey said. “I know it’s not my usual style, but you know how it’s been so hot lately. I figured I could try something new.”

“She’s lying. I made a bet that she wouldn’t wear something that left her shoulders bare,” Ben said with a grin.

“And _I_ made a bet that _you_ wouldn’t wear something that also put _your_ marks on display,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him. To Rose, she said, “He hasn’t worn shorts since he was fifteen years old because his marks are above his knee.”

“And _your_ shoulders haven’t seen sunlight since _you_ were fifteen years old.”

“Yeah, that was a surprise. I thought I still had a couple of months until they’d appear.” The fact that she could casually talk about one of the more traumatic aspects of her childhood spoke volumes about how far she’d come in the past year. Rose knew that there were some things that Rey would never share with her, but the fact that Rey trusted her enough to share some of her stories…

Rose definitely didn’t feel for Rey the things she felt for Poe, Finn, and Kaydel. But she really loved her best friend. And it meant a lot that said best friend loved her back.

“They really _were_ meant for each other,” Poe said in a theatrical whisper to Rose.

“No, we _weren’t_ ,” Rey and Ben said in unison. “We still fight all the time,” Rey added.

“Oh yeah? What was the last fight about?” Poe asked.

They had the grace to look a little sheepish as Rey muttered, “Whether _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ is a better show than _The Legend of Korra_.”

_Of_ course _they’d argue about cartoons_ , Rose thought as they launched into the argument again. _“So-called" soulmates, my ass._

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a lesson in "I need to finish my fics before I start posting them." (In my defense, when I started writing this, I thought it was going to be a fraction of the length it ended up being, and it ended up delving into stuff that I didn't realize would be weirdly difficult for me to write. Surprise!)
> 
> If you're reading this, thank you so much for taking the time to give my excuse to explore the implications of a soulmates AU. Overall this has been a really interesting story to write and all of your kudos and comments absolutely make my day, especially during the unexpected hiatus. I've really enjoyed reading your answers to the soulmates AU worldbuilding questions - most of you have had vastly different experiences with relationships than I have and come from different backgrounds than me, so it's fascinating to hear about others' experiences with this!
> 
> Today's final soulmates AU worldbuilding questions: are relationships in a soulmates AU really all that different than they are in our universe? Is it any easier to start and maintain a relationship with someone knowing that they are or aren't your soulmate from the start? Alternatively, do you have any other headcanons for how a universe like this works?

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to chat/give me constructive criticism/yell about reylo/whatever, I'm on [tumblr](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/) and I welcome all of it. (Or leave a comment here. Both make me happy.)


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